How does GST on PayPal payments work for Australian Taxation?
"TL;DR - my understanding of the rules is that if you are required to register for GST (earning more than $75k per annum), you would be required to pay GST on these items. To clarify firstly: taxable income, and goods and services tax, are two different things. Any income you receive needs to be considered for income tax purposes - whether or not it ends up being taxable income would be too much to go into here, but generally you would take your expenses, and any deductions, away from your income to arrive at what would generally be the taxable amount. An accountant will help you do this. Income tax is paid by anyone who earns income over the tax free threshold. By contrast, goods and services tax is a tax paid by business (of which you are running one). Of course, this is passed on to the consumer, but it's the business that remits the payment to the tax office. However, GST isn't required to be charged and paid in all cases: The key in your situation is first determining whether you need to register for GST (or whether indeed you already have). If you earn less than $75,000 per year - no need to register. If you do earn more than that through your business, or you have registered anyway, then the next question is whether your items are GST-free. The ATO says that ""some education courses [and] course materials"" are GST-free. Whether this applies to you or not I'm obviously not going to be able to comment on, so I would advise getting an accountant's advice on this (or at the very least, call the ATO or browse their legal database). Thirdly, are your sales connected with Australia? The ATO says that ""A sale of something other than goods or property is connected with Australia if ... the thing is done in Australia [or] the seller makes the sale through a business they carry on in Australia"". Both of these appear to be true in your case. So in summary: if you are required to register for GST, you would be required to pay GST on these items. I am not a financial advisor or a tax accountant and this is not financial advice." "Regardless of wether or not you are registered for GST, you are legally required to include a GST total on every invoice sent to an Australian customer. This GST total must be 10% of the payment amount if you are registered for GST, or it must be $0.00 if you are not registered for GST. Since all GST transactions with the government are in Australian dollars, this amount on the invoice also needs to be in AUD, or else it's impossible for you and your customer to both be working off the same GST amount. This means you need to transfer your money from USD to AUD in PayPal's ""Manage Currencies"" area before you can send a tax invoice to the customer, so that you can provide the correct amount in AUD based on the actual exchange rate for the day (and you are required to send invoices promptly). Alternatively, you can collect payments in AUD using PayPal or use a different payment service that collects payments in USD but immediately converts them to AUD for sending an invoice (australian paypal competitors often provide this service)."
This is really a question for the paypal folks. as I understand it however, when you setup a paypal account, you are granting it access to your back account, so when you make a payment using paypal, it takes money directly from your bank account, and if you get paid for something via paypal, the money goes directly into your account. If that's not how they paypal account you have is working, then you need to get help from paypal to figure out how to make it work for you. I just tried doing that on my PP which is in the Netherlands, I have added a USD bank account (from my dutch bank) and they sent the verification amount in Euros, I called the bank and wonder why they didn't let me choose account currency they said it's not possible and if I cashout Dollars that I have in my PP (cause we usually do international business so we set it to dollars) it will be changed to Euros, So we decided to keep the dollars in account to pay our bills instead of getting ripped off by PayPal in xchange rates. (community wiki) Ontario special HST sales tax transition rebate cheques: When and how much? What will happen to quarterly GST cheques when HST starts in Ontario? Ontario HST rebate: When would I qualify? Ontario gas prices & HST: What will happen to prices at the pump on July 1, 2010? How will Ontario’s HST apply to books / textbooks, which were PST exempt before? How can I minimize the impact of the HST? How does the HST affect a condominium purchase? Will I need to pay HST on condo maintenance fees? My Ontario small business collects only PST (beneath GST threshold). How will HST affect me? "I haven't seen anything specifically about how PayPal operates, but my guess is that they maintain relationships with banks in many countries via affiliates, and they settle the money transfers internally within the PayPal system. You basically have two types of bank transfers (there are others as well that I'm not getting into): I think PayPal is a hybrid -- they send and receive money using drafts to keep costs down, and manage the international stuff by operating a proprietary network. So if you send money from Indonesia to the US, you pay ""PayPal Indonesia"", who then tells ""PayPal USA"" to issue funds to your recipient. So they are cheaper than a wire, faster than a check, but limited in terms of transaction size and some other factors." there is no tax for receiving money from outside of india paypal just take their charges only Yes. You must register for GST as well, if you will be making over the threshold (currently $60,000). That's probably a bonus for you, as your home office expenses will mostly include GST, but your income will most likely be zero-rated. Check with an accountant or with the IRD directly. Just be certain to put aside enough money from each payment to cover income tax, GST and ACC. You will get a very large bill in your second year of business. "Are you in the US?  One thing you can do is prepay taxes at a rate of a 1.8% fee.  Much lower than paypal.  I would do this on what is ""left over"". Here are somethings that I would tend to do in your case: Those are some of the things I would be looking at. Do you care to share the details of your offer?" Tax is due in India as you offered services from India.  So whether the International Client pays via Credit Card, Bank Transfer, Paypal or any other means is not relevant. Even if the International Client pays you in a account outside India; it is still taxable in India. If you're waiting for Apple to send you a 1099 for the 2008 tax season, well, you shouldn't be. App Store payments are not reported to the IRS and you will not be receiving a 1099 in the mail from anyone. App Store payments are treated as sales commissions rather than royalties, according to the iTunes Royalty department of Apple. You are responsible for reporting your earnings and filing your own payments for any sums you have earned from App Store.   – https://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/01/app-store-lessons-taxes-and-app-store-earnings The closest thing to sales commissions in WA state seems to be Service and Other Activities described at  http://dor.wa.gov/content/FileAndPayTaxes/BeforeIFile/Def_TxClassBandO.aspx#0004. When you dig a little deeper into the tax code, WAC 458-20-224 (Service and other business activities) includes: (4) Persons engaged in any business activity, other than or in addition to those for which a specific rate is provided in chapter 82.04 RCW, are taxable under the service and other business activities classification upon gross income from such business.   - http://apps.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=458-20-224 I am not a lawyer or accountant, so caveat emptor. For people who frequently submit payments via PayPal, you may want to try and negotiate with them to use Paypal mass payments.  Although the mass payment program is designed to send small amounts to many people, you can process payment batches of 1 transaction. In the CA mass payment fees (paid by sender) are 2% capped at 1.25 CAD To CA and US.  International payments are 2% capped at 24.00 CAD.  No fees for receiver.  A business PayPal account is required to enable mass payments. When I mention this to customers, many are unaware Paypal's mass payment program exists! https://merchant.paypal.com/ca/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=merchant/mass_pay Are you sure about either of those? PayPal owns Braintree which can accept Bitcoin, but I've never seen the option in PayPal itself, and I've looked, though not recently.   I've also not noticed PayPal in HD, but maybe I'm just not observant. Is that in all their stores? "I cannot speak for Paypal specifically and I doubt anyone who doesn't actually work on their internal automated payment systems could. However, I can speak from experiencing in working on automated forex transaction systems and tell you what many institutions do and it is often NOT based on live rates. There is no law stating an institution must honor a specific market exchange rate. Institutions can determine their own rates how and when they want to. However, there is some useful information on their website: https://www.paypal.com/an/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/sell/mc/mc_convert-outside ""The most readily available information on currency exchange rates is based on interbank exchange rates. Interbank exchange rates are established in the course of currency trading among a global network of over 1,000 banks, and are not available through consumer or retail channels."" This leads me to believe they pull exchange rates from either Oanda or XE periodically and then use these rates throughout the day to conduct business. Paypal does not disclose who they use to determine rates. And it's highly doubtful they do this for every transaction (using live rates). Even if they did, there would be no way for you to check and be certain of a particular exchange rate as paypal states: "" Consumers may use these rates as a reference, but should not expect to use interbank rates in transactions that involve currency conversion. To obtain actual retail rates, contact your local financial institution or currency exchange, or check the rate displayed in your PayPal transaction."" This is partly because rates can change by the second just like stock prices or anything else which is susceptible to the open market's variables of supply, demand news events etc. So, even if you check the rates on Oanda (which you can do here: http://www.oanda.com/currency/converter/) you are not going to get a 100% accurate representation of what you would get by doing an exchange immediately afterwards from Paypal or any other financial institution. However, if you want to estimate, using Oanda's currency converter will likely get you close in most scenarios. That is assuming Paypal doesn't charge a premium for the exchange, which they may. That is also assuming they use live rates, it's also possible they only update their rates based on market rates periodically and not for every transaction. You may want to test this by checking the exchange rate on your transaction and comparing that to the Oanda rates at the same time." From PayPal's website: PayPal offers discounted transaction rates for 501(c)(3) charities for   most products, and consistently low rates for all other nonprofits. No   extra fees for setup, statements, withdrawals or cancellation.   2.2% + $0.30 per transaction and no monthly fee for charities. There is a reduced rate if the donations total more than $100,000 (which they would for Wikipedia), but PayPal doesn't publish those rates. You have to call and ask about them. One forum I read indicates the rate drops to 1.9% + $0.30 per transaction. "Best answer I've heard when asking this question is ""because they can."" Traditionally Australia was remote enough, and it was justified due to the cost of shipping and importing... but now that's not the case and they're still sticking it to you, and you're still paying it.  Even digital media (music, video, software), the poster-child of an item that has zero difference in delivery cost, cost more in Australia and there is absolutely no reason for it outside of the fact that you're going to pay it. Sorry dude... Start finding ways to fight back.  Find a US based VPN and route your purchases through the U.S., maybe save some money that way?  Make your physical purchases overseas and ship them home when you happen to leave the country (if ever).  Have friends do so when they leave the country... Good luck!" Whenever you pay or withdraw some fund from your account, paypal takes approx 3% of the current currency value along with the fees. i.e. If you are paying/withdraw 100 unit of US Dollars to British pounds and if the current convertion rate is 1$=0.82GBP, then consider reducing 3% of the actual currency rate. So, the approximate magnitude will be 0.82*97% (100-3=97) = 0.7954. So, 1$=0.7954GBP. This formula will not give you 100% accurate value but will help of course. Captain