If you are a US citizen or resident with a SSN and US bank account, then this information does not apply to you.
If you are a non-US citizen, reside outside of the US and pay foreign taxes, or some other non-US-based person, then you’ll need to consider the information below and conduct your own research.
Please note that I am not an accountant or tax specialist and you are responsible for investigating your specific circumstances and tax liabilities.
Taxes/VAT
When you are selling your books through Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon), you need to be sure that your tax liability information is properly filled out in your account dashboard.
If you live in the EU, there is most likely a tax treaty between your country and the US that prevents you from paying US-based taxes.
If that is the case, set your tax withholding to 0% as you don’t need to pay the US government taxes on books you sell via Amazon.com.
However, this is not a “set it and forget it” situation, as your tax withholdings settings expire in KDP every 3 years.
So, do yourself a favor and head to your KDP dashboard right now and check that you have set your tax % to 0 if you qualify and set a 3 year calendar reminder from the date you created your account, as you’ll need to update your settings.
Email from KDP (as of Oct 2018)
“I understand that the tax withholding percentage has changed to 30%. Please be aware that the tax information that you enter in the KDP account will remain active for 3 years. You’ll need to reupdate the same tax information again once in every three years.”
Important Exceptions
Updating your tax information every three years applies to authors who have registered themselves as a company—so, if you created an LLC publishing imprint, this applies to you.
The verdict is still out if non-company individual authors will need to update their tax information every three years as well, but to be on the safe side, keep an eye on your account settings or your accountant will have a tough(er) time untangling your tax liability at the beginning of the year.
