If you earn money with content, you rarely have just one income stream. There is the commission from the Amazon Associates program, the revenue share from ads on YouTube or Facebook, the payout from a creator program and the fee an affiliate network pays you for recommending a piece of software. For a US LLC owned by someone outside the US, these are not variations on one theme. They are different types of income with different US tax logic. And on one platform, the LLC is not even the right payee. Sort this out properly once and you spare yourself 30 percent withholding, frozen payouts and forms that have to be corrected after the fact. The specifics of YouTube income are covered in detail in the YouTube article. Affiliate programs and the other platforms each follow their own logic.
Three types of income, three tax logics
Whether the US withholds anything from a payment to you depends first of all on whether the income is US-source income. The IRS summarises the rules in its overview of the source of income, and two lines of that table decide almost everything for creators and affiliates:
Compensation for personal services is sourced where the services are performed. At its core, an affiliate commission is payment for bringing in buyers: you create content, place links, promote products. If you do that from your home outside the US, the sourcing rule points to foreign income, even when the payer is a US company.
Royalties for copyrights are sourced where the right is used. That matches how Google treats YouTube ad revenue: it only withholds on the share that comes from viewers in the US.
Then there is a third category that has little to do with tax law: programs that do not pay companies at all. TikTok is the clearest example.
The good news for the typical structure: from the US point of view, your LLC is tax-transparent and does not carry on a business in the US. As long as that stays true, its profits owe no US income tax; the reasons are in the foundational article on tax treatment. So the question is not whether the US taxes your commissions, but whether a payer withholds as a precaution because it lacks the right paperwork.
The form: the owner's W-8BEN, not the LLC's W-9
US platforms usually ask for tax information before the first payout. This is where a common mix-up happens: the LLC is a US company with a US tax number, so Form W-9 for US persons seems the obvious choice.
The IRS sees it differently. The instructions for Form W-9 say this about tax-transparent entities: if the owner is a foreign person, the owner must complete the appropriate Form W-8 instead of a W-9, even if the owner has a US taxpayer identification number. The instructions for Form W-8BEN-E confirm it from the other side: a transparent entity with a single foreign owner does not document itself; the owner submits a W-8BEN or a W-8BEN-E, depending on whether the owner is an individual or an entity.
For a single-member LLC with you as the owner, that means: you submit your personal W-8BEN, naming yourself as the payee and stating your country of residence. The W-8BEN-E, by contrast, is the right form when the LLC is owned by a foreign corporation. If your LLC has several members or has elected to be taxed as a corporation, different rules apply again; that calls for an individual review before the first payout.
One point that often gets lost: the tax treaties you can claim on a W-8BEN are those of your current country of residence, not those of your passport. Once you have moved away from a country, you can no longer rely on its treaty with the US. And some popular destinations have no income tax treaty with the US at all: the IRS list of tax treaties does not include, among others, the United Arab Emirates, Paraguay, Panama and Uruguay. For commissions from services performed abroad this usually makes no difference. For US royalty income, such as the US share of YouTube ad revenue, it very much does.
Affiliate programs: Amazon as an example of how it works
The Amazon Associates program shows well what to look for in any affiliate program: who is your contracting party, and what happens without tax information?
In the US program, your contracting party under the Operating Agreement is Amazon.com Services LLC. The tax clause in Schedule 3 is clear: Amazon may withhold any taxes it is required to withhold, requests tax information from time to time and may hold back your commissions until you provide it. Without a proper W-8BEN, you may get no payout at all.
If you promote Amazon.de, the picture changes. Under the participation agreement of the German Associates program, your contracting party for amazon.de is Amazon Europe Core S.à r.l. in Luxembourg, and it too reserves the right to withhold your fees if tax information is missing. Your LLC is then providing a service to a business in the EU. The VAT on it is owed by the recipient under the reverse charge principle, which we explain in the reverse charge article.
The same checking order applies to affiliate networks and direct programs run by software companies: establish who the contracting party is and where it is based, submit the form it asks for, check the payout threshold and the payment method. The commission itself remains payment for your referral service.
Google and YouTube: the US share is what counts
For YouTube, Google separates revenue cleanly by viewer country. According to YouTube's help page on US withholding tax, once valid tax information is on file, only the share of revenue from viewers in the US is subject to withholding, at a rate between 0 and 30 percent depending on your country of residence's treaty. Without tax information, things look much worse: for an individual account, Google can then withhold up to 24 percent of worldwide revenue, and for a business account outside the US, 30 percent of US revenue.
If you live in a country without a US tax treaty, you bear the full rate on the US share. That is not a question of the LLC but of the sourcing rule for royalties, and it is the same mechanism that hits self-publishers on Amazon KDP; the KDP article works through the example. The details on YouTube, including when the model is worth it for creators at all, are in the YouTube article.
Meta: forms, withholding and a deadline nobody reads
Ad revenue on Facebook is governed by the Content Monetisation Terms. Three clauses matter for LLC owners.
First, the contracting party. "Meta" there means Meta Platforms, Inc., Meta Platforms Ireland Limited or an affiliate.
Second, the tax clause. You must provide Meta with the tax number, forms and certifications Meta needs for reporting and withholding. Meta may deduct taxes that must be withheld under US law or any other law, and these are entirely at your expense. Where applicable, Meta also issues self-billed VAT invoices, and you are responsible for paying the tax shown on them.
Third, the deadline. If you do not complete your payout setup within six months of accepting the terms, the contract says you lose your claim to the amounts accrued up to then. For payees outside the US, payouts only start at 100 dollars; smaller amounts roll over to the following month.
TikTok: here the LLC is the wrong payee
With TikTok's Creator Rewards Program, the form question never even arises for the LLC. According to TikTok's help page on the program, a participant must reside in a country where the program is available, provide genuine account details such as their real name and date of birth, and have a personal account. Business accounts are expressly excluded. So the program is aimed at you as a person in your country of residence, not at a company in Wyoming.
That is no drawback once you know it: creator payouts go to you personally and are taxed in your country of residence. Brand deals you promote on TikTok, on the other hand, can be invoiced by your LLC in the normal way, because there your contracting party is the brand, not the platform.
Brand deals: here the LLC writes its own invoice
Besides commissions and platform payouts, many creators have a third major income stream: paid partnerships, where a brand pays directly for a post, a video or a campaign. There is no form in a platform dashboard here, just an invoice from your LLC to the company. And the VAT rules of the country where the brand is based decide what that invoice has to contain. If you invoice cleanly, marketing departments find you easy to work with, and in partnerships that is a real competitive edge.
What the LLC does and what it does not do
For affiliate and ad revenue, a US LLC is a clean collecting vessel: one business account, one billing address for brand deals, one company that platforms and networks accept as a business partner. But it does not change where you are liable to tax. Your LLC's profits are taxed in your country of residence, under its rules.
The checklist before your first payout
- Determine the type of income for each source: a commission for referrals, a revenue share from advertising with a US royalty component, or a creator program for individuals.
- Choose the right form: for a single-member LLC with you as the foreign owner, your personal W-8BEN, not a W-9 in the LLC's name.
- Check your country of residence's treaty, not your passport country's, and claim on the W-8BEN only what you are actually entitled to.
- Note the contracting party for each program: Amazon.com Services LLC, Amazon Europe Core, Meta Platforms Inc. or Ireland. Your invoice and the VAT treatment depend on it.
- Keep deadlines and thresholds in view, such as Meta's six months for the payout setup.
- Receive TikTok payouts personally and invoice brand deals through the LLC.
If your income comes from several platforms and you are not sure which form goes where, or whether your country of residence has a treaty with the US, book a consultation with Sebastian, held in English. The attorneys on the firm's team review the forms and the treaty position for your specific structure.