What are the tax liabilities for an international transaction?
After a bit of rooting around the HMRC sites, I found this page which says this: One key difference is that digitised products are classed as electronically-supplied services for VAT and customs duties. These services are: For VAT purposes, the place of supply of these services is the country in which the customer lives. If you supply electronic services to a business customer in another European Union (EU) country, the customer accounts for any VAT due in that country. You should not charge UK VAT. If you supply electronic services to a consumer, charity or government body in another EU country, you have to account for UK VAT. If you supply electronic services to anyone in a country outside the EU, you don't pay any VAT. If, as a UK business, you buy electronic services from a company outside the UK, you have to account for VAT. If I read this correctly, I as the supplier of the website need to account for VAT only if the sponsor is a consumer, charity or government body in another EU country. It is not covered in this site, but I assume I must also account for VAT for a customer based in the UK.  So in answer to the original question, a customer from Canada (which is currently outside the EU) would account for the VAT themselves, and I would simply charge the gross amount.
Creating a corporation is not necessarily less taxes. In fact, you'll face the problem of double taxation, and since you must pay yourself a reasonable salary, if your corporation doesn't earn much to give you as dividend after the salary, and/or your tax bracket is low, you'll in fact may end up paying more taxes. Also there's a lot of bureaucracy involved in managing a corporation. Liability on the other hand is important, and what's more important - is asset separation and limiting the liability to the corporation assets, keeping your personal assets safe. To achieve that, you don't have to create a corporation, but you can create a Limited Liability Company (LLC). LLC are disregarded entities for tax purposes (i.e.: you won't have to pay taxes twice, only once as a sole proprietor/partner), but provide the liability limitation and asset separation. LLC's are much less formal, and require much less paperwork reducing the risk of corporate veil piercing because of non-compliance. I myself decided to manage my investments through LLC's for that very reason (asset separation). "The refund may offset your liability for the next year, especially if you are a Schedule ""C"" filer.  By having your refund applied to the coming year's taxes you are building a 'protection' against a potentially high liability if you were planning to sell a building that was a commercial building and would have Capital Gains. Or you sold stock at a profit that would also put you in the Capital Gain area.  You won a large sum in a lottery, the refund could cushion a bit of the tax. In short, if you think you will have a tax liability in the current year then on the tax return you are filing for the year that just past, it may be to your benefit to apply the refund.  If you owe money  from a prior year, the refund will not be sent to you so you will not be able to roll it forward.    One specific example is you did qualify in the prior year for the ACA.  If in the year you are currently in- before you file your taxes-- you realize that you will have to pay at the end of the current year, then assigning your refund will pay part or all of the liability. Keep in mind that the 'tax' imposed due to ACA is only collected from your refunds.  If you keep having a liability to pay  or have no refunds due to you, the liability is not collected from you." "I've had a mortgage changing hands with mid size companies for many years with no problems.  I've handled many complex financial and technical transactions with multiple parties with no problems over the course decades. Then, after my last refinance, my mortgage fell into the hands of JP Morgan Chase. The bank sent one letter to let me know of the transfer, and in the next week they sent my loan to collections for what I later found to be Chase's process error in the transfer.   For the next three months, I ended up in customer service hell as one Chase group threatened to foreclose on my house while another group told me to ignore the imminent foreclosure notices. One started to ""investigate"" the transfer while the collections group tried to make me pay my mortgage payment twice.  The mess only ended up being taken care of after I tracked down the old owner of my loan and had them refund the ""lost"" payment directly to me - normally they would have sent it to the company buying the loan, but could not get Chase to accept the payment. Then I paid Chase that exact same mortgage payment.    All the time the Chase internal investigations and collections department were completely incapable of a simple call to previous holder of the loan. A company handling millions of mortgage transactions is somehow incapable of handling a minor glitch in a mortgage transfer? It's either utter incompetence or total malice in picking up extra penalty fees or maybe an occasional forclosure if homeowners didn't say on top of the details. This is what we used our collective tax dollars to bail out." As others have mentioned yes it is taxable. Whether it goes through payroll and has FICA taken out is your issue in terms that you need to report it and you will an extra 7.5% self employment taxes that would normally be covered by your employer. Your employer may have problems but that isn't your issue.  Contrary to what other users are saying chances are there won't be any penalties for you. Best case you have already paid 100% of last years tax liability and you can file your normal tax return with no issues.  Worst case you need to pay quarterly taxes on that amount in the current quarter. IRS quarters are a little weird but I think you need to pay by Jan 15th for a December payment. You don't have to calculate your entire liability you can just fill out the very short form and attach a check for about what you will owe. There is a form you can fill out to show what quarter you received the money and you paid in it is a bit more complex but will avoid the penalty. For penalties quarterly taxes count in the quarter received where as payroll deductions count as if they were paid in the first quarter of the year. From the IRS The United States income tax is a pay-as-you-go tax, which means that tax must be paid as you earn or receive your income during the year. You can either do this through withholding or by making estimated tax payments. If you do not pay your tax through withholding, or do not pay enough tax that way, you might also have to pay estimated taxes. If you did not pay enough tax throughout the year, either through withholding or by making estimated tax payments, you may have to pay a penalty for underpayment of estimated tax. Generally, most taxpayers will avoid this penalty if they owe less than $1,000 in tax after subtracting their withholdings and credits, or if they paid at least 90% of the tax for the current year, or 100% of the tax shown on the return for the prior year, whichever is smaller. "You will need to file  a US income tax return, and declare all income world-wide.  Whether this results in any tax owed depends on your particular circumstances, and the effect of any tax treaties between the US and India. There are additional requirements for the filing of information on the amounts in foreign accounts held by ""US tax persons"".  Depending on the nature of these accounts, the complexity of the forms, and the penalties for non-compliance can be quite high... Short version:  Consult a professional well-qualified in US/India tax matters..." If you have income in the US, you will owe US income tax on it, unless there is a treaty with your country that says otherwise. "1. What forms do I need to file to receive money from Europe None. Your client can pay you via wire transfer. They need to know your name, address, account number, and the name of your bank, its SWIFT number and its associated address. The addresses and names are required to make sure there are no typos in the numbers. 2. What forms do I need to file to pay people in Latin America (or any country outside the US) None. 1099s only need to be filled out when the contractor has a US tax ID. Make sure they are contractors. If they work for you for more than 2 years, that can create a problem unless they incorporate because they might look like ""employees"" to the IRS in which case you need to be reporting their identitites to the IRS via a W-8BEN form. Generally speaking any foreign contractor you have for more than 2 years should incorporate in their own country and you bill that corporation to prevent employee status from occurring. 3. Can I deduct payments I made to contractors from other countries as company expense Of course." Based on the statement in your question you think it should have been on the 2014 W-2 but it was included on the 2015 W-2. If you are correct, then you are asking them to correct two w-2 forms: the 2014 form and the 2015 form. You will also have to file form 1040-x for 2014 to correct last years tax forms. You will have to pay additional tax with that filing, and there could be penalties and interest. But if you directed them on the last day of the year, it is likely that the transaction actually took place the next year. You will have to look at the paperwork for the account to see what is the expected delay. You should also be able to see from the account history when it actually took place, and when the funds were credited to your account.  or you could just pay the tax this year. This might be the best if there is no real difference in the result. Now if you added the sale to your taxes lat year without a corresponding tax statement from your account, that is a much more complex situation. The IRS could eventually flag the discrepancy, so you may have to adjust last year filing anyway.