There’s this, too:
Immigration officials announced last week they deported a Russian man who posted a widely circulated photo to social media that showed him with his pants around his ankles atop Mount Agung, a sacred site for Hindus. Another Russian man was deported in late February for working as a photographer in violation of his residence permit.
One of our friends from Taiwan also moved to Japan and works from home for the Taiwanese subsidiary of a major US company.
It winds up that after HR from Taiwan and Japan hashed it out, the end result was he got “transferred” to the Japanese subsidiary but still reports to his Taiwanese boss.
As you said earlier in the thread, the difference is in the numbers.
There have always been people dreaming of the next invention, but social media seems to make it easier for (some) people to make money and a lot easier to others to delude themselves into believing they will become big time influencers.
Days after we arrived in Hokkaido my wife and I had lunch at famous spot and saw a Taiwanese couple. Despite the low temperatures, under her warm parka, the woman was dressed with a lot of skin showing and they spent far longer getting the perfect angle of her eating the pizza than they did actually eating the food.
Was she making money on this vacation? Is she an influencer or a wannabe? It’s a lot easier to spend a few thousand on airline tickets and hotels than soliciting money from angel investors. Whether you can actually make money is a separate issue.
Agreed.
I may have buried my lede in my response to @Mangetout which you quoted. Which apparently left me pushing a different point than I’d meant to convey. I’ll try again.
As I read his point that I quoted in my response, he was seemingly suggesting a distinction between a successful influencer, art photog, whatever, who’s already making money at it and might (should?) be subject to regulation, taxation, etc., versus a wannabe that’s trying but not yet profitable who might (should?) be classed as a tourist. In my interpretation of his point he contended that one is working; one is not.
And I came back to contend the opposite: both are working and pursuing profit and therefore both might (should?) equally be regulated, taxed, etc., as businesses or workers. The only difference is whether their respective pursuits of profit are successful yet. Just like a startup B&M.
Separately to all that, you’re surely right that sheer numbers matter. Both from a practicality of enforcement angle and from a volume of tax or fee revenue foregone angle.
Whether, like music “piracy” in the cassette & CD days, TPTB simply throw up their hands in the face of rampant unstoppable public non-compliance, or whether they will try to go all draconian on the public’s a$$ will be interesting to watch. Certainly different countries will try different approaches.
I’m not really sure I had much of a point, just an observation - that I think you have correctly summarised above - unsuccessful influencers are basically standard tourists.
Regarding taxation, I think it’s probably true that if the country in which the activity takes place has a tax treaty with the home country of the person earning, the taxation will happen in the individual’s home country (which is where they declare earnings for taxes). Not quite the same, but my YouTube revenue is technically ‘earned’ in the USA but I pay taxes on those earnings here in the UK (I did have to submit a form for this, otherwise YT would just withhold a portion of it and hand that straight to the IRS)
Countries are already working to address this with ‘digital nomad’ visas - Spain and Portugal being two recent examples. For anyone that fancies a bit of remote working, looking up ‘digital nomad visa’ for a specific country is a good place to start.
OK, I understand better.
One difference is profitability. If they don’t have revenue then there are no taxes and then the regulations shouldn’t be as much.
Much of international business is done on visa waivers. All the time I was doing international business and living in Japan, that was the norm.
People would attend trade shows, conduct business for a week and even close deals and mostly it was done on visa waivers, which are good for both tourism or visiting for business reasons.
In theory, sure. But in practice i imagine most countries are not deeply motivated to chase down unsuccessful influencer-wannabees, or even write regulations to encompass them. Both because how can you prove it, and more importantly, because there’s no revenue to tax.
This question definitely falls into the bucket of “it depends on the country”, though.
Do people actually have to do paperwork to attend trade shows (as opposed to exhibitors, who are obviously working?)
I have watched a few episodes of a local show here in NZ called Border Patrol, which covers customs, biosecurity, and entry issues. The immigration agents seem to be very good at identifying those (usually young ladies, but not always) that are attempting to enter NZ with the intention of working illegally in the sex industry - such work is legal, but only for permanent residents. I have also seen them pick up on freelance photographers - if you turn up with a lot of camera gear, don’t have a permanent employer, and a quick google associates your name with photographic work, you might not be allowed in on a tourist visa. I would expect influencers to end up in a similar category if influencing is their primary source of income.
That said, I certainly saw several couples who were obviously doing the Instagram thing during our summer break in the Southern Lakes district this year - in some popular places there was a queue of wanabee influencers hogging the photogenic spots.
What do you mean by “do paperwork”? With the trade show organizer? The government of the country you are visiting?
All the trade shows I was involved with required registration both for exhibitors and attendees, even the free ones.
The US government requires a different visa for people who are visiting for business purposes but the visa waiver program doesn’t require applicants to specify their purpose, either as exhibitors or as attendees.
Trade show organizers do have paperwork (invitation letters, etc.) for people who need to apply for visas.
In the industry I was in, then very little “business” was done if one defines business as transactions involving money. New contacts were made, new products where shown but the actual shipping of good and payments were done later.
However, countries that don’t have waiver programs often require people to apply for a business visa even to do that.
Customs in the various countries are very careful about how you document the products you display so that you don’t have to pay taxes on them.
Most countries (even France!) allow visa waivers for business travel such as you describe
The funny thing is that these very same Feds also decided that every US citizen, including those who live and work permanently in another country, are citizens of that other country, and pay taxes in that other country, must continue to file US tax returns and are liable for US federal taxes for the rest of their lives. Furthermore, US citizens with more than $10K in a “foreign” bank, even if they’re also Canadian citizens and live and work in Canada and keep their savings in a Canadian bank, must file a Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts Report (FBAR) every year with the IRS along with their tax returns. Even the banks themselves have been induced by the IRS to snitch on US ex-pats via the reporting requirements of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which has made some Canadian banks wary of dealing with US citizens.
Great, ain’t it? It’s not directly analogous to the California case except that both seem to involve a great deal of self-declared extra-territorial power. I guess the Feds can do all that because there’s nobody to stop them.
One other country in the world does the same - Eritria. They at least are honest about it, they threaten consequences for your relatives back home if you don’t pay up.
The only time I attended a trade show in the USA I was actually on vacation anyway. (Business paid the hotel for the extra days I went to Boston for DECworld). It never occurred to me that I should tell US Customs that I was also going to be on business. I wonder if there was special paperwork needed to attend a trade show. I imagine Las Vegas would strenuously object to such obstacles for visitors since trade shows is one of their big draws.
So does “visa waiver” mean no paperwork for trade show attendees (as opposed to the exhibitors), just tell customs why you’re going?
“Visa waiver” means you don’t need a visa to enter the US - for example, Canadians don’t generally need a visa to enter the US and don’t usually need a visa to conduct temporary business like attending a meeting or convention. But “temporary business” is distinguished from “employment” and as far as I can tell “temporary business” is limited to attending meetings and conventions and similar activities like negotiating contracts. People coming from non-waiver countries can engage in these activities with a visitor visa.
From the US Government
Before countries had visa waiver programs, (the US started in 1986) you had to either have a tourist visa or a business visitor visa to enter the country.
India still doesn’t have visa waivers for most other countries, and it’s a pain in the @ss to apply for even their tourist visa.
Technically, you can still apply for a visitor visa (either a tourist visa or a business visitor visa) to visit the US but with the visa waiver program, you can attend or exhibit in trade shows or visit customers, etc or just go on vacation. They don’t care what you do.
What country are you from? You are most likely from a country that is allowed to participate in the visa waiver program.
When I traveled to trade shows in Europe or Singapre and if I was ever asked the purpose of my visit then I’d say it was to attend a trade show. Customs doesn’t care.
I’m not sure I follow this story.
Don’t most Americans not need anything for temporary visits to Canada? (As opposed to living there for an extended period?)
What was the “necessary paperwork?”
If he was just there for a short stay, why would he feel that he needed to lie?
How did they know to come pick him up the next day?
On day two of a trip, what laws had he broken?
Yeah, same thing for Taiwanese and Japanese banks.
Pretty much everywhere, although Vietnam is another exception.
One thing I found out was the Taiwan allows visa free visits but only if your passport is valid for more than 90 days. Years ago, before I had a family visa to Taiwan, on one trip there I had less than 90 days and needed to apply on the spot for a visa. I also wound up needing to get a new passport to apply for a visa to Vietnam on the same trip.
Even worse, as far as I remember, those who last resided in California, and then moved out of the country, still have to pay California state taxes. I even read a recommendation that those planning to move out of the country should first establish residence in a state other than California, so that they don’t have to even worry about whether they might be subject to California state tax.
In the mid 90’s, so I don’t recall the details. he was actually an Australian(?) living and working in the USA. Maybe that’s what mattered. He was coming to work on a computer system for a week or so, not just a meeting or convention.
He’d been there at our work before, so I presume that’s how the border people knew where he’d be.
Americans don’t need visas for temporary visits for personal reasons, but they do need them for work purposes, is my understanding.
And lying to immigration is one of the quickest ways to get booted.
My daughter and family just visited us in Montreal for five days. Her husband works remotely about half the time anyway and, while he took some vacation time for the visit he also did some work while here. He entered as a visitor with no work permit. Probably illegal, but indetectibly so.
My son spent the entire month of February visiting. He does gig work and it has been entirely remote since the pandemic started. He did a fair amount of work here. He is a Canadian citizen, nothing illegal about his working here. But will he pay Canadian taxes? I doubt it.