Taxation of Earnings from US Websites

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Let us say that you run a website hosted by a US hosting firm that targets US consumers. You run the website yourself from the UK, you don't have any employees in the US, the only item connected to the US is that you rent hosting from a US company, so the host computer is located in the US.

Under these circumstances, are you able to sign a "Certification Of No United States Activities"?

For tax purposes, can you just declare earnings from this US site on your UK tax return?

If so, do the earnings from the US site need to be declared separately in some way on the UK tax return?


One related bit of advice I have found from my Google AdSense account is:

"Google does not require tax information for this AdSense account. AdSense publishers are responsible for complying with the local tax laws as required by the publishers' local governments."

I'd be interested to hear how other affiliates deal with this type of situation.

Thanks

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Anyone?

Thanks

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For tax purposes, can you just declare earnings from this US site on your UK tax return?
If so, do the earnings from the US site need to be declared separately in some way on the UK tax return?

Hi
Include in Sales on your tax return as it is part of your UK business and not classed as foreign income

Regards

Keith
HRBS.biz

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Hi
Include in Sales on your tax return as it is part of your UK business and not classed as foreign income
HRBS.biz

OK, so for clarification you are saying that earnings from a US affiliate site are not differentiated at all on the tax return, they just get included with your UK affiliate earnings?

Purely for the benefit of the forum, I will give my present understanding of the tax treatment of any US affiliate site a UK affiliate may have. Disclaimer! Affiliates should not take this as professional advice and should make any tax treatment decisions on their own:

If you only rent US hosting from a US company, you can qualify for "Certification of No United States Activities". However, if you yourself own the server, that means you own equipment in the US, and you fall under the US taxation regime, and have to apply for a US taxation identification number etc. Also, if you employ anyone in the US, either full-time or contractors, you fall under the US taxation regime.

If you qualify as above for No United States Activities, you can then submit the US tax form W8-BEN. This will mean you don't pay tax in the US on your US earnings, but the US earnings would still have to be declared on your UK tax return. The UK and US have a tax treaty and the W8-BEN contains your UK tax identification number. I take it this is needed to ensure that whatever needs to be done "behind the scenes" between the UK and US tax authorities is adhered to.

If anyone has a different understanding of these matters, I'd be interested to hear it.

Rgds