International Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Free-lancers in foreign countries?
I realize I should consult with our immigration lawyers, but we have a list of about 20 other questions to cover with them right now and their turn-around time isn't very fast anyway.
Does anyone know- if you freelance and get paid by US-based clients, in dollars, do you have to declare that in any way in the country where you're living? Does it matter what kind of visa you have if you don't plan to seek employment IN the country where you're living? In our case, it would be France.
TIA.
Re: Free-lancers in foreign countries?
I don't know about France, but I work as a freelancer in Canada for a US-based company. I'm a US citizen with Canadian permanent residency. I get paid in US dollars and deposit in my US-based account, but I declare the earnings on my Canadian tax return and pay Canadian taxes. As explained to my by both my immigration lawyer and accountant, because I am performing the work in Canada and I'm now a resident of Canada, it doesn't matter where the client company is located. I also have to file a US return since I'm a US citizen, but because of tax treaties between the US and Canada, I don't owe any additional US taxes.
I was also counciled by my attorney during the immigration process to be very careful about working as a self employed individual for a US company while I was waiting for my immigration to go through. It was sort of a proceed at your own risk situation. I wasn't authorized to work in Canada yet while they processed my immigration and while I probably could have gotten off on a technicality if anyone asked about it, she said immigration and border people can get very picky about it, and while it may not have been technically taking work away from a Canadian or landed immigrant, it could have held up my case or got me flagged.
Why does it matter? If you're living in France I assume that there is a tax treaty and any taxes you pay to France will be credited against your tax debt in the US, which as a US citizen you can't get around.
I'm pretty sure that if you are a resident of France and doing your work in France, they will want taxes (you are using their infrastructure, after all). But I'm not an immigration attorney and you should really talk to them.
It matters because of what the first responder said. I don't want to endanger my residency status in any way, but a big part of what makes us "relocatable" as a family is the fact that I WAH. I'm not sure if DH's company will be thrilled about things if that means our visa process will be delayed or messed up in any way because of my work situation.
I just thought I'd put a feeler out here while I wait to talk to the immigration attorneys.
Good luck, I hope you're able to swing it, I know another person who had a somewhat similar situation and she did do a little bit of freelance work and I don't think she ever had any issues or got "caught". I think every situation is a little bit different and your attorney will probably have a concrete answer. I was climbing the walls after about 8 months of not being able to work, but I was just paranoid about bending the rules and making the long lengthy process even long and lengthier