Indian TDS Tax Withholding on Upwork Earnings

[lenaellis]

Starting October 1st, Upwork will begin withholding Tax Deducted at Source, TDS, from payments to freelancers and agencies located in India as part of a new tax law enforced by the Indian government.

As part of our continued efforts to remain compliant with tax laws in India, we are asking that our customers in India provide their Income Tax Identification number in the “Tax Info” section under “Settings”. For purposes of TDS withholding, the Indian government will accept either a Permanent Account Number (PAN) or an Aadhaar number. Please be sure to use the correct format for your PAN or Aadhaar number as defined by the Indian government:

• PAN is a 10-digit alphanumeric entry, i.e., A A A A A # # # # A
  # = Numeric   A = Alphabetic 

• Aadhaar is a 12-digit numeric entry

For those freelancers and agencies that have provided a PAN or an Aadhaar number:

We are required to withhold 0.75% of all your payments, starting with the first dollar you earn as of October 1, 2020, and forward it to the Indian government. The rate is scheduled to increase to 1% on April 1, 2021.

For those freelancers and agencies that have not provided a PAN or an Aadhaar number:

We will be required to withhold 5% of all your Upwork earnings and forward it to the Indian government. You will be able to claim a tax credit or refund from the Indian government should you pay more taxes than required. 

You will need to add a PAN or Aadhaar number in order to keep the withholding tax at .75% of your earnings.  Click here to Add Income Tax Identification.

To learn more about Indian TDS, click here. 

Let us know if you have any questions.

[e0d6df0f]

Hey Goran,

somehow the attachment did not go thru in my previous email. See the attachment to understand how TAN helps.

Hence asking the TAN of Upwork in India so I may use the same and file my tax return without delay.

Regards,

[g_vasilevski]

Hi Ravikanth,

One of our team members will reach out to you via ticket as soon as possible and will assist you further. Thank you.

[prax0408]

Hi,

To be honest, I am at the stage where I am ready to give up on you guys (@Upwork). Lately every new process or changes introduced by you are only to suck more money, commission and/or deduction. Your customer support has gone bonkers and it's incredibly hard to get past your ChatBot, it kills chat session without any logical reason on account of technology glitch.

Anyways, I just need to know one timeline or target date when you can share the Form 16A, it has been ages since you guys have been only trying to work it out. I have started to have serious doubt whether witheld funds were even further submitted to Indian Income Tax before deadline or not. Please dont give us COVID 19 as an excuse because honeslty that is a nonsense excuse by a company who is pivoting a lot on WFH concept.

If you want us to go to TRACES, please share your TAN

[mullamustafa7]

Is it safe to provide aadhar card number in tax information of upwork in India?

[AleksandarD]

Hi Mustafa,

Upwork takes commercially reasonable steps to help protect and secure the information it collects and stores about Upwork Users. All access to the Site is encrypted using industry-standard transport layer security technology ("TLS"). When you enter sensitive information (such as tax identification number), we encrypt the transmission of that information using secure socket layer technology ("SSL"). We also use HTTP strict transport security to add an additional layer of protection for our Upwork Users.

Please note that TDS will apply to all client payments sent to Indian freelancers and agencies, with the amount of TDS to be collected determined by whether or not you have provided a PAN or Aadhaar number to us.

• A 1% tax is withheld from earnings for freelancers that provide a PAN or Aadhaar number to Upwork.
• A 5% tax is withheld from earnings for freelancers that have not provided a PAN or Aadhaar.

You will need to add a PAN or Aadhaar number in order to keep the withholding tax at 1% of your earnings. To enter your PAN or Aadhaar number, you can do from this page.

Thank you.

[kirti-umrigar]

Can you tell me more about TRACES? where can i find it? should i have to create an account somwehere?

Thanks.

[vipunit]

It is in income tax filing india website.

[kansal2403]

As upwork is Holding TDS amount, but I can't see that in TDS portal, and even don't know how much amount they have deducted so far. Could you let me knwo the right steps to check all

[smahalgavaiya]

Upwork tan DELU07765C

[kirti-umrigar]

ok. Thank you.