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Most countries outside of America (including Ireland and the UK) have a tax treaty with America to prevent double taxation, ie. The money is taxed in America, and is then taxed again in Ireland. If you live in one of these countries, you pay 0% tax once your itin (or whatever that form is) has been filed..

If you live in the US, I presume you would have declared your stock earnings and been taxed on it anyway, so again I'm presuming you will not be taxed twice, your simply being taxed at the source, instead of submitting it as part of your annual return..

Please note: You are ONLY to pay tax on sales made IN AMERICA. Any sales to Europe are not effected. We pointed this out to shutterstock when they brought this in, and they initially tried to charge tax on every sale, so if Fotolia try and tax every sale, you need to fight them on it. (it's robbery essentially because they keep the money, American revenue does not want it)

They are taking 28% of each and every sale of mine. I'm from the US, and have been paying taxes on my micro earnings from the beginning, I don't need to have them withheld by Fotolia. Aren't there laws against this sort of thing; I can't believe what Fotolia is doing is legal. Has anyone tried contacting the US IRS(Internal Revenue Service) about this? If FT gets away with this, what's to stop the other agencies from doing the same thing?

Yes.  Exactly the same situation here.  Making it impossible to sort my e-mail with all that junk in there.

Seems a load of threads about tax on fotolia's forum have now been deleted, without explanation, and still no formal announcement about what is going on.

Thanks Danrok! I did the maths and indeed they witheld 'only' about 30%, although the message clearly says 43%.
It was an 8 credit sale (murphy's law that only the biggest non-subscription sales are from the US? ) for $2,26.
They withheld 0,672 (30% = 0,678, 28% would be 0,6328)
2,26 - 0,672 would be $1,588, but i earned $1,57. (2,26 - 0,678 (=>30%) would still be 1,582).

So indeed it was roughly 30%; it's the 'roughly' that's bothering me. I know they only pinched off $0,01 which definitely is not a big deal...if it happens systematically though we might be talking about big numbers that FT gets extra...

I actually file my W-9 on 1/2/2010, how long it would take to active it?

my tax form was validated just a couple of days after I submitted.

When I'm logged to FT, I click on My Credits in the upper menu, there are all the sales credits like this:

   Photo Sale credit - File ID: 11224000   +1.6

   Photo Sale credit - File ID: 13848922 (withholdings included at 30%)   +1.4

The second one had witholding.

Then if you click on My Files in the upper menu Statistics in the submenu, you see options for stats viewing, the last two options are new and are for the tax stuff:

How many of my files have been viewed?
How many of my photos have been downloaded?
How many files did I buy/download?
How many credits have I earned?
How many credits have I converted?
How much is the withholding amount?
How many credit have I earned from US buyers?

FT is US agency. One would say your statement holds true even if the sale happens through US agent. Yet I assure you tax laws are not fully logical. So I wouldn't be surprised if under some conditions the income would get taxed.

There is absolutely no way that a sale made in Europe, using a European contributor, is subject to this particular American tax, Shutterstock checked this with both their legal team and American revenue, and subsequently split all sales on their web site so that American tax is only charged to American clients.. it does sound a little complicated, but for obvious reasons if both the buyer and the uploader are located in Europe, Europe has it's own trading laws that apply, and American revenue have nothing to do with that sale as regards withholding tax at least..

you can see it in "My Credits", and another part in "My Files" - "Statistics" - "How many credit have I earned from US buyers?"

I live outside of the US, and I did fill W-8BEN without ITIN. Thus currently I get 30% deducted from my US sales and 0% from non-US sales.

In 2009 my US sales generated 12% of my total Fotolia sales. Thus having 30% deducted from that amount means loss of 4% total income from FL. While I don't like to loose anything, I am not sure if all the hassle obtaining the ITIN number is really worth it.

thanks, i never noticed that. i am based in the us but have yet to file a w-9 form. no tax has been witheld yet and approx. 50% of my credits are through us buyers.

I'm pretty sure buyer has to provide some info in order to make the accounting stuff work for both side. I believe the 'US' customer is based on this info (i.e. where the the customer is locations/is paying taxes).