MicrostockGroup

That looks a bit desperate.  I think most of us don't want to undercut the market, we are already selling cheap.  They need to come up with another strategy to get me interested.  They still haven't sorted out the withholding tax problem for foreign contributors.  I'm still not interested in getting an ITIN number just for one small site.  It might improve things if they sorted that out, like most of the other US sites have done now.  I have no incentive to upload until they fix that.

+1
(though less of a balance, but the same issue)

Is the exclusive pricing part of the member loyalty program too? How do they treat sub sales? Since we can't really control the prices at most sites, I don't see much use of it unless they expect us to lower the prices at 3d to undercut all other sites. (I still don't know how they would treat subs. I suppose if they wanted to be aggro it would be the cost of an image with a maxed out max price sub plan - which is very low). Maybe a more realistic way would be to make your commission the same as the lowest commission- then I'd definitely have to dump IS.

In any case as I understand it now, No thanks.

Hello All:
The Exclusive Pricing Program at The3dStudio.com was not really aimed at the stock photo/image side of our business. Our 3D model sellers asked for it and many of them are joining this new program. There were issues at other 3D sites after royalties were lowered so some of the modelers chose to RAISE prices on other sites to compensate for the lowered royalties. We are not suggesting anyone LOWER prices on T3DS and we are not suggesting anyone undercut.

Minimum price for stock photos at our site is $2. Sellers can set their own prices above that amount thought most seem to go with our standard prices. We would not ask you to lower it below that nor would we allow it. Those who want to join the EPP must first join the Member Loyalty Program and the majority of our 3D sellers are in the MLP.

Re the tax forms--believe me, we certainly do NOT want to have to do it but our tax and legal advisors insist that we follow the correct procedure. The ITIN thing is only an issue for sellers outside the US on orders placed by buyers inside the US. That said, I would agree it would be annoying if you are one of the few who are affected and I would also agree that the US tax code is horrific. 

Sharpshot: I am not sure what is "desperate" about us introducing a new program that was suggested by our members. When members ask for something, we try to accommodate them if we can. One member suggested it and Matt merely opened it up to others because we treat everyone equally. So we will offer EPP to all, but it is up to each Member to decide if a particular program is suitable for their situation.

MicrostockExp: We have no minimum payout if you accept PayPal, so if you have a $100 balance and aren’t getting paid via PayPal, you should check your Buyer Home Page on our site and see what your settings are and also contact Support on our site so they can address your particular situation.

We pay the 1st-5th of each month for sales the previous month. With our payment system, sellers do not “withdraw” money--it is paid automatically.

We aren’t on forums very often so if anyone has questions or problems, PLEASE use the Help buttons on our site or contact us via links on our site. Forums or private messages on other sites are not a good way to get service on our site.

[email protected]

Thanks, pancaketom. I try to get here once a month but can't always do so. We pride ourselves on our customer service--to sellers as well as buyers--so I hope anyone with any specific questions or problems will contact us directly on our site so we can resolve any issues for them.

@LisaAnderson I appreciate your replies but due to the fact that I don't to go through the troubles to apply for an ITIN, my money is blocked on 3Dstudio and it stay this way if nothing is done for european contributors:(

MicrostockExp, I am not an expert on the ITIN stuff. Here is a link to our tax info page: http://www.the3dstudio.com/help_tax.aspx

It seems odd to me that your total royalties owed are all from US sales that would be subject to the tax. Are you sure it's not the W8BEN that you need to fill out to be paid? I don't know what your user name or Member ID are on our site so I cannot look at your situation. If you want us to check it out please contact [email protected] or use the help button at www.The3dStudio.com.

dirkr, I am sure there are plenty of "experts" out there who might offer whatever opinion we wanted and who would encourage us to "go with the flow" and follow what other sites do. We don't follow the other guys in their low royalties, subscriptions, poor treatment of sellers, or other practices I read about that stock photographers seem to find distressing, so I guess it's not that surprising that we are also not going to blindly follow them into what might be problems with the IRS if it turns out the other sites are wrong and just haven't been caught yet.

We read tons of IRS stuff and discussed it with our CPA who teaches courses in tax ethics. As we found out what other sites were doing, we got opinions from other CPAs. They all say they can't understand how other stock sites get away with it, but their advice to us did not change. Whether other sites feel they are too big to be caught or that they can afford more lawyers if they are caught, or whether they have some sort of registration in other countries that exempts them from the regulations our advisors tell us we are subject to, we don't know. But we feel we are doing what the IRS requires for our situation. We don't like it, but it does not affect that many of our sellers' sales and those who were affected have done what they had to do.

We will continue to look into it when we can and we would LOVE to find legal proof that we could change our procedure.

luissantos84, I don't understanding what you mean.

If you mean we would deliberately hold someone's money and not pay them, that is not the case. Until we can legally pay a seller, the money is held in our business account--we do not keep it for ourselves and we do not use it for any purpose, because it is not our money.

There have been cases where we tried to pay someone and we could not do so--if they forgot to tell us they changed their email address or mailing address or PayPal account. Or if they signed up and added products but never filled out any tax forms. In these situations like this, the money is waiting for them.

If you are saying something else and it is directed to me, please clarify what you mean.

Thanks!

Thanks for clarifying--as a family operated company we are somewhat sensitive about our reputation. I wish we knew how the big companies can justify things that small companies can't get away with! Not just in stock but in general. How did GE get away with paying no taxes on gazillions of dollars of income? 

I'm sure many of us wish we knew their secret, or maybe we just wish we knew their CPA! 

We will keep looking at it. I haven't read the applicable IRS stuff for over a year but I know when we read the IRS publications, it did not seem like we  were misinterpreting what we read--but I admit all IRS stuff seems like it is written to confuse. Every time we asked about this subject, our tax advisors went over the same publications with us and their advice stayed the same.

Could it be where the companies are located that might exempt them? Perhaps they are not registered in the US or have corporate offices in another country as well as here?

I wish someone who is now, or formerly was, an IRS employee with expertise in this area could provide an explanation of the documents publicly. Unfortunately, we don't have anyone in our family who qualifies--perhaps someone who posts in the forum has a family member or friend who is qualified to provide "expert testimony" on this topic?

It would be wonderful to get the true scoop from someone who has the credentials to provide proof from IRS documents. Just following other agencies and hoping they are doing it right is not something we are prepared to do. 

^^^No, they have a PDF form that we can fill in without an ITIN number and then we can get the withholding rate for our country.  The UK withholding rate is 0%, so that's OK for me.  I'm waiting for Cutcaster to set up an online form, like Veer, SS, FP, FT, BigStock and DT have done.

I do hope someone from one of the sites that has set this up could help you but they probably wont want to help a rival site.