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Comment by carlsborg | Hacker News Reader

Smaller US based companies are more likely accommodate you, if they like what you bring to the table. Common arrangement is to start a company in the EU and your company will invoice the US company.

Taxes: I am not a lawyer, pay a specialist to confirm this part. You fill in either a W-8 BEN (as an individual) or a W-8BEN-E (as a company) and the company keeps this on their records, which basically says "the US has a double taxation treaty with my country so the US co should not withhold taxes", which for most EU countries is in place. You might have to dig through the specific treaty and find the appropriate section that describes withholding percent on the type of income. Search for information regarding those two forms. IIRC Upwork makes service providers fill and send those forms, or used to back in the day.

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I've only filled W-8 BEN forms for personal trading.

As a small business in Poland, I'm issuing invoices to North American businesses with no added VAT (netto==brutto) and a side note that tax is a liability of the party receiving an invoice.

When purchasing services from countries that have "no double tax" treaty with Poland, I'm gathering "certificates of tax residency" which abroad businesses get from revenue government bodies like IRS or CRA.

thanks, this is what I did when invoicing to the UK. For W-8 BEN do you need to report income from sales of services in the US along with income from dividend / capital gains?

I need to report income from stock shares sold abroad (Nasdaq etc) once a year. To my understanding, US' IRS informs my local revenue gov body of my sales and that's what W-8 BEN was signed for. I've only seen these forms within brokerage platforms.

I have no knowledge of it being in any way related to my small business but there's a possibility that my accountant is doing it. Unlikely and I've only heard of W-8 BEN in relation to trading shares, bonds etc which I'm doing as a private person.

Services performed in another country are not US source income and should not be taxed on the United States. Capital gains are also not taxed by the United States. However, interest income and dividends on US equities are generally US source income and without a treaty, owning a brokerage account will generate a us tax liability

> Smaller US based companies are more likely accommodate you, if they like what you bring to the table. Common arrangement is to start a company in the EU and your company will invoice the US company.

Any thoughts on how you find them? US job boards? Recruiters? Cold emails?

> You fill in either a W-8 BEN (as an individual) or a W-8BEN-E (as a company)

thank you for this info. Ive heard something similar with relation to dividend payments from US, which in the end might complicate things, but its a good indication of what needs to be done.

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