Ask HN: Accepting payments in Bulgaria/UK from the US.

4 points by adamof 13 years ago | 1 comment

Hey guys,

I've been following HN for a while now and I was hoping that there might be someone that could help me a bit with an advice about setting up payments. I am a Bulgarian and last year I was on an exchange in the US, where I worked for a software engineering company. I was working as a contractor, hence I was supposed to pay my taxes myself. The problem was that I started working in February and left the county in June, so that tax year wasn't over and I couldn't pay my taxes. Since then I continued working for the software company remotely from the UK and they are transferring my salary to a US bank account.

Here are the two problems: -- I don't want to get in trouble with taxes, because I plan on traveling and doing business with the United States. Could you guide me how can I check if first, I am supposed to pay taxes, since I am not a US citizen and secondly, if I do, how can I pay them from outside the country. -- If you have done business with US companies how do you arrange your money transfers. My employer told me that the bank said that they would have to hold 25% of the pay, because of taxes (which I guess is normal).

Thanks Stefan

jwblackwell 13 years ago |

The best thing you can do would be to either call the respective tax authorities (here in the UK that's HMRC) or seek professional advice. You situation likely isn't that complicated or hard to sort out but you don't want to screw up based on the advice of an anonymous HN user.

If you ring up the tax man asking to pay tax I'm pretty sure they will be able to help :) If you think you can save money by reorganising finances then get an accountant.