Network wants a W-9 before they release anything and I'm not American

Had this exact thing land on me two weeks ago and I still don't have a clean answer, so here it is.

Network I've been running with since March - decent volume, nothing huge, maybe $2k a month - sent me a message saying my next payout is on hold until I complete their tax onboarding. Fine. I open it and it's a W-9. I'm not American. Never told them I was, the address on my profile is not American, my bank is not American.

Support says complete the W-9 or the payment stays where it is. I've asked twice for someone who actually knows and got the same copy-paste both times.

Anyone had this and got it unstuck? And is there a version of this where I walk away from $1,800 because I refused to hand over paperwork that doesn't apply to me?

w-8ben, not w-9. their onboarding is misconfigured for non-us affiliates. push it to your AM, not support

grindstone has it. The W-9 is for US persons; the equivalent for everyone else is the W-8BEN, or the W-8BEN-E if you are invoicing through a company rather than as an individual. They are not interchangeable, and a network that offers you only the W-9 has simply not built the non-US path into its onboarding flow.

Two things worth knowing before you push back. First, the W-8BEN is not a tax return and it does not create a US filing obligation; it is a declaration that you are not a US person, which is exactly what you want on record with them. Second, if your country has a treaty with the US you can claim the reduced withholding rate in Part II, and if you leave that section blank some processors will withhold 30% by default and consider the matter closed.

I would send them a short, boring message naming the form. Networks respond to specificity in a way they do not respond to complaints.

Actually i have the same problem last year my friend, with two network. One send me the correct form after i ask, the other one just say is the only form we have and i lose the money (perdi tudo).

So is worth to ask but do not wait forever. Down here is common that the small network never fix this, they only build for US affiliate really and everybody else is a bug to them.

How much of the $1,800 is already earned versus still pending? That changes what leverage you have.

All of it earned - campaign ended in August, nothing pending. Which I assume means zero leverage.

This has been broken at every network I've dealt with since about 2014 and it's always the same root cause: someone bolted a US tax module onto a platform that was never built for international payees, and support reads back whatever the module tells them.

Back then you could usually get around it by not filling anything in at all, because half of them didn't gate payouts on it. That changed around 2018 when the compliance hires arrived and started holding money as a matter of policy. Now the form is a wall rather than a formality.

The one genuinely useful thing I can tell you is that the AM has a manual override and support does not. I have never once got this fixed through a ticket. I have got it fixed the same day three separate times by messaging the AM on whatever chat app they live in and saying the words W-8BEN. Say the form name. Do not describe the problem.

One correction to my own post: if you are invoicing as a sole trader rather than a registered company, the W-8BEN is still the right form. The -E variant is for entities only. I have watched two people submit the wrong one and land straight back in the same queue three weeks later.

Closing the loop since a couple of people asked me by PM.

AM had a W-8BEN in my inbox forty minutes after I named the form. Paid on the next cycle, nothing withheld, because I filled in Part II like quietaccountant said.

Three weeks lost to a support queue that never had the form in the first place. Anyone else hitting this - skip the ticket entirely, it isn't a person on the other end of it.