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Google Income Taxes in Belarus

This article is unlikely to be useful to those who do not live in Belarus, if only to be surprised how difficult it is in our system to get your honestly earned money without accounting training. I do not pretend to be the ultimate truth, but if I had found something similar to this article at one time, I would have saved a lot of time and money. I hope she helps someone to start creating and making money in the Play Market, while living in Belarus)

In the Play Market, I started, like everyone else, for a little bit and without a thought about big money. The first goal was simply to recapture the $ 20 paid for the developer account.

Start


At the time when the first $ 100 appeared on my advertising account, I had an open IP and a bank account - not on purpose, it just coincided.

And so, when they flew into the account, the first difficulties began. They called from the bank. They said that it was necessary to do a bunch of some operations, to confirm where the currency came from and why, under what agreement (at that time in Belarus there was still a mandatory sale of part of the earned currency). In general, a lot of what I could not think of. Plus, everything had to be turned over in 7 days, of which 6 have already passed. No time - administrative responsibility.

First problems


I had to find out how to do the right thing by phone with the bank employees. It was very lucky that a woman was working in the department who had already encountered something similar in practice. She had a client who once made out advertising revenue from a site through Google AdSense. After all, the main problem is that there was no agreement with Google, only a public offer, and when registering income, the obligatory line was the number of the agreement. As a result, everything was decided by putting BN (without a number) on this line, but almost no one knew for sure whether this was correct.

Transfer from a transit account to a foreign currency account, currency distribution: sell 30 percent, leave the rest in foreign currency; then sell the rest and transfer to the ruble, then cash out on the card, in the final submit these incomes to the tax ... At that time, for the programmer who simply wrote the appendix and 3 clicks uploaded it to the Play Market, all this turned out to be an adventure.

Revenue growth


Initially, I received income only from advertising and made it out according to the Simplified Taxation System (hereinafter referred to as STS) at 5%. At the beginning of 2017, information appeared that advertising revenue ceased to fall under the simplified tax system, and I began to draw up Income tax at 16%. Soon, I had income from sales of in-game content, but I did not twitch then. These 16% were an amount that was easier to pay than to get into tax problems.

Soon, revenue from sales several times higher than advertising revenue. And I thought: 30% is taken by Google, of the remaining amount 16% is taken by the state. After that, another 1% is taken by the bank for cashing out, not counting the fees for servicing a bank account. 100% * (1-0.30) * (1-0.16) * (1-0.99) = 58.8% of what I earned was left to me.

Questions to the tax


At the end of 2017, I asked the tax consultation in Minsk a question. These aunties have been trying for a long time to understand how this is so I earn money interestingly. Explained by the example of buying stickers in Viber. They were even more surprised that I didn’t have any contracts and contracts with Google, and I was guided only by a public offer.

Google Play Terms of Use Google Play

Software Distribution Agreement

As expected, they didn’t give me a specific answer, saying that they would call back if they found out. They called after 3 months. They invited me to their place. It turned out that they sent a request to the Ministry of Taxes and Fees. And they were given an official response. Below I attach copies of the documents that were issued to me, after briefly trying to explain their meaning.

Answer from tax










The essence of the tax response


After parsing this document with them, and after them with my tax inspector, we came to the following:

I pay tax on all 100% of what I earned, according to the simplified tax system it is the same 5%, but not on the income that came to me, but from all that I earned with a deduction of 30%. That is the figure that the Play Market shows. In addition, I must pay Foreign Organization Income Tax. It turns out 15% of 30%. Total (100% -30% -30% * 0.15-5%) * 0.99 = 59.9%.

The gain was small. In the same documents it is written that in order to avoid double taxation, when providing a certificate confirming the permanent location of a foreign company, I can not pay 15%, but simply file a declaration of income. Total (100% -30% -5%) * 0.99 = 64.35 - which is already quite a substantial gain. At the same time, from January 1, 2018, the fee for payments of subscribers paying for products for more than 12 months is 15, not 30%. So, over time, the percentage will increase.

Where can I get this help?


We do not have a Google representative. In the payment account there is a function of ordering this certificate by mail, but after a year of numerous attempts and expectations, nothing came to me. I wrote to several Google tech support and ended up with something similar to what I needed. But there is a slight nuance. If all income comes from the American GOOGLE PAYMENT CORP, then I give 30% to Google Ireland Ltd.



That is another step - to avoid double taxation with Ireland. The following document, sent by technical support and previously translated and certified by the translation agency, was enough:



At the moment, the whole process of receiving money is as follows:

Bank:


  1. Request to the bank about from whom and for what the money came
  2. Currency Exchange Request
  3. Request to the bank withdrawal to the card

Tax:


  1. Once a quarter, a 5% declaration of the total amount earned is filed and paid (2 in the following picture), including deductions from Google
  2. Once a quarter, a declaration is submitted for the income of a foreign organization, it indicates the income given to Google (this amount comes for each month to the payment office, 1 in the following picture), but this declaration is not paid




If suddenly someone needs an article on how to fill out all bank requests and a declaration - write, if you want, I’ll write an article with examples)

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