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Obligations of translators and companies established by international tax treaties
Thread poster: Barbara Thomas
Barbara Thomas
Barbara Thomas
United States
Local time: 20:12
Spanish to English
+ ...
Jun 3, 2003

Due to a recent dispute with a translator about "excessive burocracy" Alba Lux has had to investigate international tax treaties.

While trying to satisfy Spanish tax law requiring us to retain income tax on all translators who cannot document their "tax ID", we found information that is necessarily of interest to the Proz community.

In the specific case of Spain and the U.S., the exchange of services between U.S. and Spanish concerns is governed by the Income Tax Conven... See more
Due to a recent dispute with a translator about "excessive burocracy" Alba Lux has had to investigate international tax treaties.

While trying to satisfy Spanish tax law requiring us to retain income tax on all translators who cannot document their "tax ID", we found information that is necessarily of interest to the Proz community.

In the specific case of Spain and the U.S., the exchange of services between U.S. and Spanish concerns is governed by the Income Tax Convention with Spain, with Protocol General Effective Date Under Article 29: 1 January 1991, which can be found at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-trty/spain.pdf,

To avoid double taxation, translators or companies from one country must provide provide their contractors with form 6166, Foreign Certification Requests, which can be found at

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/article/0,,id=96318,00.html

If this document is not on file with the contractor, the contractor is required by law to retain a percentage of the fee. In the case of Spain this is 25% and the translator later recieves a statement that they have paid taxes abroad. Consequently, all translators are advised to acquire a copy of this document for their transactions with companies located in other countries and all agencies are advised that they may be held liable for not withholding taxes on their translators.

Barbara Thomas, MD
Alba Lux
237 Tramway Drive, Ste. B
P.O. Box 6957
Lake Tahoe, Nevada 89449

410 Park Avenue, 15th floor
New York, NY 10022

Tel: 1 917 210 8025
Calle Almagro, 4, 4º dcha

28010 Madrid, Spain
Tel: 34 917 021 490
eFax: 1 800 416 0192

e-mail: [email protected]
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Obligations of translators and companies established by international tax treaties







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