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Comment by tom_rath | Hacker News Reader

If your business has no presence in the United States you should not need to pay any taxes to that government. This topic comes up frequently on the BoS board: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz and a quick search there should provide a ton of resources.

If in doubt, consult an accountant.

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They clearly have a US presence if they're selling to US customers though.

Rather than asking a Tax Attorney could you ask the IRS? They should know! Bet they won't tell you though.

> They clearly have a US presence if they're selling to US customers though.

I sell to US customers every day and do not have a US presence, please.

> Rather than asking a Tax Attorney could you ask the IRS? They should know!

Absolutely they do.

> Bet they won't tell you though.

Sure they will. And they'll be nice about it too.

Did you mean "should know" as in "are likely to know" or "it would be good if they knew"? Based on my experience with them, I would agree with the latter possibility and disagree with the former.

OTOH I'm also the only person I personally know who wound up filing the simplest US tax form along with a handwritten note describing additional income that was not taxable for a reason that could not be found on any US tax form. For the curious, that reason can be found as article XX in http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-trty/canada.pdf. (That is a later form of the treaty than the one I was using, but article XX is unchanged.)

That tax code only applied to you because you had a presence in the US though.

As for the communications with the IRS, compared to similar institutions in other countries they are absolutely stellar.

Please note that that is a relative statement :)

Being that I am a dual US/Canadian citizen, it would have applied to me regardless. I don't know what most other countries do, but I'm definitely annoyed that the USA will try to tax my non-US earnings because I am a citizen.

As for similar institutions in other countries, the only one I have experience with is Canada, and my experience with them has been orders of magnitude better than my experience with the USA. How do you think I tracked down the right article in the US/Canada income tax treaty to avoid double-taxation?

There is the 180 day rule, I'm not sure if it applies to you.

I don't know what 180 day rule you're talking of, but I'm very sure it did not apply. A US citizen is taxable in the US for world-wide income. (Though there is a nice tax break for money made as a foreign resident, and there are lots of double-taxation treaties with lots of countries.)

I was in the bizarre situation of being a US citizen living in the US, going to a US school, being paid a scholarship from the Canadian government that was not taxable in the US. To make things worse I was actually a dual citizen in a country that barely acknowledged the possibility of such. In short I was that bureaucratic nightmare called "an exception they don't have any forms for".

> In short I was that bureaucratic nightmare called "an exception they don't have any forms for".

That can have it's advantages too :)

I misremembered by the way, it's called the 183 day rule (it's been a decade, apologies). Anyway ,here is some info on it, it seems that you may be exempted from Canadian taxes under that rules, because you are spending less than 183 days per year in Canada:

http://www.google.com/search?q=canada+taxes+183+day+rule

But maybe the specifics of the scholarship change that again.

The rule is (or at least was that that time) that a Canadian citizen receiving Canadian source income is always taxable in Canada.

However the sum was so small that I didn't owe any taxes on it. I still filed though.

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