As a US citizen, what law requires me to pay income tax? I've found content (especially from Irwin Schiff) that says there's no law requiring US citizens to pay income tax. Other sources claim that income tax is mandatory. If there really is no law requiring me to pay, I'd like to know (for obvious reasons). What law or laws do require me to pay? Or are there currently no such laws?
The Internal Revenue Code found at Title 26 of the United States Code. Title 26 is the full compilation of all the laws passed by Congress relating to tax liability and every other legal obligation, definition, exemption, exception, etc. The Internal Revenue Code is the law that requires people to pay taxes and if you believe the folks who say it's only a legal requirement as assessed, they're wrong.
No, it is not debt and you are not owed any money beyond what Congress decides to give you. Section 1104 of the act says the benefits are what Congress decides to give out. This was challenged in 1960 and upheld. To quote Wikipedia: Ephram Nestor challenged Section 1104 after he was denied Social Security payments as a deported member of the Communist Party. He argued that a contract existed between himself and the United States government, since he had paid into the system for 19 years. ... The Court ruled that no such contract exists, and that there is no contractual right to receive Social Security payments. Payments due under Social Security are not “property” rights and are not protected by the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The interest of a beneficiary of Social Security is protected only by the Due Process Clause.
We don't want this issue to adversely affect our credit and got legal consulting which suggested we should pay the debt collector to protect our credit score, and then sue the landlord for the money back in small claims court. I'm a little worried about this strategy since it requires to hand away the money first, and am trying to get second opinions. The debt collector is probably either the owner of the claim against you, if it is an assignee of the claim, or an agent of the landlord for purposes of collection. Thus, payment to the debt collector is equivalent to payment of the landlord. The law varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction regarding whether payment constitutes of waiver of a right to sue over the debt. Sometimes it is necessary to designate the payment "under protests" or "reserving all rights", but that is not a uniform rule of law that applies in all jurisdictions, and I do not have the time and familiarity with that state's law to research Massachusetts case law on that point accurately.
First of all, the USA's legal system is not here to be referee to every single little "gotcha" mistake, and every little mistake doesn't mean a payday for someone. The employee at the tax preparer screwed up. They mixed up your folder with the other guy's folder. It was an honest mistake, which is another way of saying "nobody stands to gain from this." The best LEGAL action you can take is to either destroy the copy in your possession, or mail it back to the tax preparer, and call it a good day, done well. The law of torts exists to adjudicate sincere and structural divergences of interests, not to fix silly mistakes. As a point of law, what was the damage of this "event?" Some random person (you) saw a 1099 belonging to someone else. In good faith, you attempt to find and reinstate the rightful owner with their document. All good. As it is, you have zero "standing" in a case of inadvertent clerical error between two other parties.
Can individuals spend money acquired in settlements that include an NDA? is the party that receives the payment allowed to actually use it? Yes. Payment of a substantial sum is oftentimes the main or only incentive for the injured party to bind himself in an NDA. A prohibition to spend that money would de facto nullify the benefit without which the party would have declined the NDA. Sandman isn't otherwise wealthy, if he suddenly buys a Lamborghini or a private jet, that money must have come from CNN. So doesn't this violate his NDA? No, typically it does not. Depending on (1) who the parties are, and (2) the hitherto divulged details of the controversy, the public might infer anyway --and with reasonable certainty-- who must have paid a substantial sum to settle the dispute. Thus, plaintiff Sandmann's [hypothetical] purchase of luxurious items would not really provide the public with new information. Similarly, if instead of buying luxurious items the indemnified person spends that money on rather necessary expenses (be it medical, property &amp; casualty, etc.) ensuing from the injury, a prohibition to spend the money would lead to another absurdity: That of perpetuating or worsening the harm inflicted to the plaintiff who couldn't otherwise afford medical treatment, new living arrangements, or repairs/replacement of property, accordingly. If the payer thinks it is important enough, perhaps the NDA could include terms requiring the payee to use some extent of discretion as to the pace of spending the money. However, such need on the payer's part seems rare, and the injured person is likelier to decline the NDA altogether if the clauses for management of the compensation are unreasonable. What counts as disclosure with regards to Non-Disclosure Agreements? Any revelation, by the parties, that contravenes the terms and purpose of the NDA in that it would give non-parties information which cannot be ascertained from prior and/or independent publications and filings. That is otherwise hard to answer because it totally depends on the terms --and boilerplate-- of each NDA.
According to the information I was able to find, every zone, country, or even states, have their own taxation rules for sales made there. Correct. Well, in no way it's possible that small companies or individuals that sell products internationally deal with tax rules for each buyer, that would be a non-sense, and paying such taxes worldwide would be a nightmare not worth having a small business at all. You are required to comply with the law. If it is complicated, or difficult or expensive to do so then, it's complicated, difficult and expensive and you still have to do it. The answer is obvious: if it's not worth having a small business, don't have a small business. The main question, if someone buys a license from my web-site, is it considered a sale in the buyer's country/state which requires me to collect and pay some remote tax, or it's a purchase in my country/state which requires me to collect HST from that buyer? It depends on the law in both Canada and the destination country. In most cases, the sale will be an export sale from Canada (GST/HST exempt) and an import sale in the destination country - requiring you to comply with GST/HST obligations there. Another question is regarding invoices, I know that Canada requires certain information to be included into an invoice for sales in Canada. If my sales will be considered sales in a buyer's Country with some other rules, does it mean I have to manage tons of invoice templates? Yes. Let's say if my sales in UE exceed 30K EUR it looks like I need to register and pay VAT there. But what if I have less? Then you don't need to register and remit tax. Nor are you allowed to collect it from your customers. By the way, I have no idea what country in the Eurozone goes by the initials UE. In most jurisdictions, you need to register either when you reach the threshold in fact or reasonably expect to reach the threshold. Also in most, you can usually register even if you are below the threshold. For example, these are the rules for Australia. Anyone, please advice. Hire an accountant versed in international digital services. They will be able to give you the advice you need. They will also be able to recommend sales/payment platforms that can handle most of this for you (for a fee, of course).
Is this actually true? Not really although there may be figments of truth woven in. First, the GDPR does not prevent tax authorities from determining layers of corporate ownership or investigating tax fraud. Second, your substantive tax liability depends upon the tax laws of the countries in question. If you owe taxes under a country's tax laws but the country can't find it, that makes you a tax criminal, and doesn't mean you don't owe the tax. Third, the exact rules on what triggers tax liability in mixed country fact patterns are highly technical and not fully uniform. If you actually do business abroad within the meaning of a country's tax laws in a way that is not subject to its taxes, then it is legal. But this scheme probably doesn't meet that standard under most country's tax laws. So you hire two local directors, as contractors, from country B. On the contract signed, they oversee the day to day operations and work for you as advisor since you're the only shareholder. So their existence, the contract and the structure show that the company is managed in country B, run in country B and has economic substance in country B. This way the offshore company isn't taxed in country A. This allows you to get dividends from the company tax free (after paying corporate taxes in country B) to your account in country A. A few thoughts on this specific example. If you truly are nothing but a passive source of funding for a company, then owning shares in this company is no different from owning shares in a public held company (e.g. BMW). The notion that dividends from the company are tax free in county A in that situation is very likely incorrect. Usually, dividends and other intangible income is taxable income in the country where they are received. Most likely, the dividends are income subject to taxation in country A. There is a concept in tax law which U.S. tax lawyers call the &quot;Economic Substance Rule&quot; which is also true, but with different names (most of these countries don't have English language tax terminology anyway) which means that when someone is going through the motions of conducting a transaction in a tax favored form when in substance, something different is really going on, the tax authorities can choose to tax the substance rather than the form of the transaction. So, if the really valuable work is being done by the shareholder without visible compensation, rather than by the local directors and managers, you the shareholder might be taxed on &quot;imputed income&quot; representing the fair market value of the services rendered, or treated as the true manager of the company in country B. Similar issues can arise when valuable intellectual property is transferred to the company without being duly reflected in a fair market value purchase of equity interests, a sale at fair market value, or a licensing agreement for royalty payments. Tax officials aren't limited to looking at paperwork. They can and do interview the human beings involved in interviews that those human beings are legally obligated to attend and cooperate with and to provide truthful information in with legal consequences for lying in those interviews. Even if no official documentation or public statements would tip off tax officials, a significant share of tax evasion cases are driven by whistleblowing by disgruntled former employees, ex-spouses, jilted significant others, mistreated business partners, and revengeful angry children who feel that they have been mistreated by their parents. Nothing in the GDPR prevents whistleblowing to tax authorities. Background In E.U. countries, closely held company ownership must be declared and recorded in a notary public's &quot;public records&quot; or a corporate register (unlike, for example, the United States, where, this information was only contained in the internal records of the company in most cases, although a new law called the Corporate Transparency Act effective January 1, 2022, or later if initial regulations aren't adopted, changes this status quo). E.U. directives expressly requires much more public disclosure by private companies than the U.S. more generally. For example, a recent Dutch overhaul of its rules for disclosing beneficial ownership of companies is a model of contemporary modern European legislation on the subject. This affords access to this information as follows (UBO is the Universal Beneficial Ownership registry and FIO is the Fiscal Intelligence Agency, an anti-money laundering agency): The public can only access the publicly accessible UBO-information with a valid registration and in exchange for a fixed fee. The identity of those persons that access the UBO-register will be registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and UBOs may inquire as to how often their information has been consulted. The Chamber of Commerce may register the Citizen Service Number (Burgerservicenummer) of persons who access the register. The FIU and other competent authorities will, upon request, have access to that information. The FIU and other competent authorities may perform a search in the UBO-register based on the name of an individual, thus listing all connections of that individual, while the public will only be able to search the UBO-register for the UBO(s) of a specific entity (and not for the name of an individual). Even though this limitation to search options was presented as a measure to protect the privacy of UBOs, it is generally expected that commercial platforms that register company information will enable searches based on the name of individuals. The FIU and competent authorities have access to both the publicly and not publicly accessible UBO-information. In the Netherlands, the following institutions are, amongst others, qualified as competent authorities with unlimited access to the UBO-information: the Dutch Central Bank; the Authority for the Financial Markets; the Financial Supervision Office; the Dutch Gaming Authority; the Tax &amp; Customs Authorities; the National Police; the Public Prosecutor’s Office; the Dutch intelligence agencies; and the Tax Intelligence Agency. As this example illustrates, taxing authorities are given express statutory authority to gather information pertinent to tax collection. The Dutch situation, prior to the recent reform, collected essentially similar information, but at a decentralized basis in the offices of the notary handling the incorporation of the entity in question, with similar parties having access to the information. The E.U.'s General Data Protection Regulation generally, affirmatively extends to the provision of a good or service to an E.U. person subject to the regulation, something that would not include tax collection. See Article 3(2). Also, mutual assistance treaty obligations between E.U. countries to share information, which would include many tax treaties between E.U. countries, and criminal investigations (which would include criminal tax fraud cases) are expressly exempted from its scope.
For a definite answer, Bob should ask his tax advisor. German freelance status (&quot;Freiberufler&quot;) is a bit difficult to navigate, because legally speaking, this status can only be applied to contract work that requires a university degree, everything else is a regular business (&quot;Gewerbe&quot;) that is taxed differently and requires you to join the chamber of commerce. This has become a bit murky as there are freelance software developers without a degree (who should be careful about using the word &quot;engineer&quot;) and the tax office seems to accept that, but I'm not entirely sure they are as lenient towards entertainers (which YT would fall under). The way I understand the Blue Card FAQ, freelancing is not allowed for Blue Card holders, I'd consider that the bigger problem (but that's an immigration issue, not a tax issue).