When we are earning online, we have to take care of all our taxes for all our online earning. Along with paying service tax and income tax on our earning, at times we need to fill out the form offered by affiliate programs to be eligible for the payment.
If you are one of those newbie affiliate marketers who have joined Hostgator affiliate program or Bluehost affiliate program, you must have encountered an issue with filling out the affiliate tax form. I often get queries from Shouters on how to fill out these tax information form to be eligible for the payment. Here is one such query from Sagar:
Filling out Bluehost.com Affiliate Tax form:
Once you are logged into your Bluehost Affiliate panel, you will be asked to fill out the tax form on this URL. You will will see a notice like this “Our records indicate we do not have a tax form on file for your account. In order to receive payment for any referrals, you must complete the required form.” The process of filling out the tax form will vary for the resident of the country you are from. There are two forms to select from:
- W-9 form: For US person or business (citizen, resident alien, corporation, etc.)
- W-8BEN form: For non U.S.Persons
If you are Indian Bluehost Affiliate or international internet marketer with no connection with U.S. as a resident, here is the steps you need to follow:
1) Select no for the first question: Are you a U.S. citizen or other U.S. person, including a resident alien individual? 2) Fill out the W-8BEN form. You can find official instruction .pdf file here.
Start with filling out all details like Name, Address, Type of beneficial owner:
Get your employer identification number for Affiliate Tax form
The most important thing that you need to do is enter the EIN number. To fill out the EIN number for Bluehost affiliate, simply add any nine numbers as EIN number. (Thanks Sagar for the tips). Simply fill up the EIN number in the form, and you will be good to submit your tax form.
- If you are in India, you need to keep all the fields under the “claim of tax treaty benefits” blank.
- In the signature field, write your complete name that will work as an authorised signature.
Click on Submit tax form and now onwards you will be able to receive payment from all your affiliate sales from Bluehost. This is the same process which will be followed for the majority of affiliate programs if you are a non-U.S. residents. The main field for which you need to work upon is filling up EIN number. You can check out this post to learn how you can promote an affiliate product on your blog.
Note: I’m not a legal expert, and above-suggested tips are based on my personal experience. This works best for an individual and someone who live outside U.S. or have no connection there.
If you have more tips and suggestions to add for filling out affiliate tax form, I would love to hear your tips.
It’s really helpful @harsh for earning more through blurhost affiliate but i didn’t know how to signup.
Thanks
Great harsh thanks for that big help buddy apriciate
Update: It doesn’t take any random number as I did according to the instruction mentioned above but got this email. Hope it will help others filled this form in future!
The electronically submitted tax form for your Affiliate account (username: xxxxxxxx) has been denied.
Reason: If you are liable for US taxes, please submit a W9 tax form. If you aren’t liable for US taxes, please submit nine zeros (000000000) for the EIN or SSN.
Please update your Affiliate account or resubmit the tax form to match and reply back letting us know when this update is complete so we may review the information.
You are right man ! I exchanged few queries with them back and forth and they asked me to write nine “000000000” Zeros in the EIN field. That worked like a charm
Im blue hosting affiliate, i dont know any thing about EIN, pls tell me how we apply for EIN?
Thanks Harsh. I am newcomer in blogging. I tried to put bluehosting affiliate ads on my website but I didn’t understand how to fill EIN or SSN number in the form. Your post help me to overcome this problem.
Thanks again for the post.
Oh, Thanks a lot this is what i looking for since last few days. and finally found your article by googling.. Once again thanks , keep it up !
Harsh ji,
Thanks a ton for this article. I don’t know how to thank you.
Great 🙂 🙂
I have been googling about this since last week and I was kind of frustrated because I don’t have any clue about tax.
Thanks a lot 🙂
Thanks for this info.
I still have not filled my income tax information in Bluehost, only because I have not made any sell there.
Oh My God! Harsh actually I spent my entire day today googling about this.I badly needed it for my SEMRush Affiliate account.Thanks a lot for this 😀
Ohh thanks harsh. actually in 5th June I signed MaxCDN. in Bank details section they need EIN
Now I wonder if I send that tax form or not. Hmmm… Will check it out at payout.
I just signed up onto their affiliate system few weeks back only to back off after seeing the EIN number for which i couldn’t find any proper help online. I tried contacting bluehost customer support. But, there was no proper answer. So i just gave up the affiliate program itself. This post just helped me. Thanks harsh. Good that I’ve subscribed to your posts 🙂
Hi Harsh,
I have encountered same problem while I was creating a bluehost affiliate account. Since, I am from Nepal, I don’t have SSN or EIN number therefore please tell me can I use same procedure to sign up for blue host affiliate from my country?
I think it should work as it has nothing to do with your geographical location..