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Mexican Withholding Tax on Upwork Earnings

lenaellis
Community Member

[Updated March 2023] We would like to update you that we are working with our vendor to have the CFDIs sent out automatically. We hope that this will be functional within the next 2 months and will allow us to provide CFDIs to our Mexican freelancers on a monthly basis. We are continuing to send out any remaining CFDIs that have not been sent out for the last quarter of 2022 as we are aware of the income tax return due date of April 30. We appreciate your continued patience.

 

 

[Updated June 2022] We apologize for the current situation in which CFDIs have not been able to be fully provided  under your name. We are in the process of digitally stamping the CFDIs and we have increased our efforts during the month of June 2022 in order to be able to finalize additional processes and send you the pending documentation as soon as possible.

It is important to mention that any sanction that the tax authority could impose for the non-issuance of a receipt for withholding and payment will not fall on the recipients (i.e. users of the Upwork platform). We understand that at this time you have not been able to prove the calculation of withholdings on your taxes, however, we will notify you as soon as the receipts are issued so that the withholdings may be used by you.

 

[Updated April 2022] We thank you for your patience. As of today, we are able to issue CFDIs for most of the transactions in Mexico and have begun processing all calendar year 2021 transactions. We will email your CFDIs in the coming weeks, but if you need to request that we expedite the process, please submit your request to support@upwork.com and we will send you your CFDIs as soon as we can. 

 

The email with your CFDIs will come from Reachcore (servicioalcliente@reachcore.com). Please add this email to your safe sender list to avoid this email being filtered as spam. The  subject of the email will be “Envío de comprobante fiscal”. In some cases, the email will come from tax@upwork.com.

 

We thank you again for your patience and please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions.

 

[Updated February 2022] We would like to take this opportunity to update you on the latest status of issuing CFDIs in Mexico. As you are aware, Upwork began income withholding in 2021. However, there was a delay in our registration process due to the complexities of a non-resident entity obtaining tax registration in Mexico. That being said, we successfully registered for tax registration in Mexico at the end of 2021. 

 

Now that we’re registered, we've worked tirelessly to issue CFDIs for income withholding that we have made. We were in discussion with one "Proveedores Autorizados de Certificación" (PAC) vendor, but due to the vendor's inability to meet our high data protection requirements, we made a difficult decision to move in a different direction. As much as we want to issue CFDIs ASAP, our user's data privacy is our primary priority and therefore we want to work with the right vendor who maintains high standards of securing our users’ data. A few weeks ago, we entered into a contract with a different PAC vendor and we are currently working through testing of our integrations. Once completed, we hope to issue the CFDIs shortly thereafter.

 

We are aware of the income tax return due date of April 30th, and we will provide an additional update as soon as we have a clear timeline of delivering CFDIs to you. We are working tirelessly to get this done within a reasonable timeframe, and appreciate your continued patience. 



 

[Original Product Release] Upwork has begun withholding income tax from payments to freelancers and agencies based in Mexico as part of the tax law enforced by the Mexican government which became effective June 1, 2020 and was modified effective January 1, 2021 (the Resolución Miscelánea Fiscal). This law requires businesses like us to collect income tax on the earnings of service providers who are based in Mexico, such as freelancers and agencies who use Upwork.

 

As part of our continued efforts to remain compliant with tax laws in Mexico, we are asking that freelancers and agencies based in Mexico provide their Clave en el Registro Federal de Contribuyentes, Income Tax Identification number (RFC) in their Tax Infosection under “Settings”

 

By providing a valid RFC number you are subject to significantly lower tax withholding.

  • If you provide a valid RFC number we will withhold 1% of all your Upwork earnings, starting with all payments made on or after April 6, 2021. 

 

  • If you don’t provide a valid RFC number we will withhold 20% of all your Upwork earnings, starting with all payments made on or after April 6, 2021. 

 

This withholding is required by Mexican law and all funds withheld will be passed to the Mexican government. You will be able to claim a tax credit or refund from the Mexican government should you pay more taxes than required.  


We also want to give you a heads up that the same legislation included adding a Valued Added Tax (VAT) on digital services. Upwork is required to collect VAT on its fees charged to users in Mexico. We have begun configuring our system to be able to collect VAT, and we will let you know when we have a target date to start collection. 

 

For additional information see our Help center article and for questions about withholdings and how this applies to you, we suggest you contact a trusted tax advisor. We cannot provide tax advice.

309 Comments
PradeepH
Moderator

Hello Nancy.

 

Upwork is in the process of getting registered in Mexico with SAT. We’ll share an update and provide Upwork’s RFC number as soon as it becomes available.

 

Thank you for your patience.

 

- Pradeep H.

gabyo21
Community Member
Why is Upwork registering with SAT? Are they setting up shop in Mexico? In
which article of Mexican Tax Law does a 1% tax rate apply? All of it
doesn't make any sense. Time will tell what Upwork is really up to but for
the time being they want us providers to pay taxes as if we were hired by
the company and at the same time we must pay a percentage to get hired on
this platform. This is a lose-lose situation for Mexican freelancers but I
guess what will happen is that they'll pitch all projects where Spanish is
required to freelancers from other Spanish speaking countries. Bottom line:
Upwork could care less for Mexican freelancers.
rayfreelance
Community Member

Hi Pradeep

Upwork has already withheld ISR of my earnings from the last week, but I haven't received an RFC from you guys. This is completely fraudulent and Upwork is breaking too many laws by doing this.

I addition, the ISR retention was from my gross income which means I'll be paying taxes for Upwork fees. Do you think the new law is "hunting" people like me? Hmmm nope, I have been paying my taxes since I started freelancing 😂 SAT want the big companies like Upwork with any kind of activity that involves México or mexicans to pay taxes. And guess what? It is not legal what you are doing, Upwork must pay taxes for the fees and not the freelancers.

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

Upwork legal team need a better advise

AleksandarD
Community Manager

Hi Raymundo,

 

One of our team members will reach out to you directly to assist you further.

 

Thank you.

ambriz_perla
Community Member

When is this going to happen? I cannot download any invoices except for the ones of the fees charged by UpWork.

escobar_irene
Community Member

Guys, I'm freaking out with this; please provide us Upwork's RFC; my tax advisor is pushing me to get it; I need to inform SAT about this; I'm tired to read that you are working on that; I need a date. 

VladimirG
Community Manager

Hi Perla and Irene,

 

I understand your frustration. Upwork is in the process of getting registered in Mexico with SAT. We'll share an update and provide Upwork's RFC number as soon as it becomes available.

 

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

alexantares
Community Member

Only for Raymundo? We all need one specialist to assist us further. Please. 

jarankowsky
Community Member

Delete.

jarankowsky
Community Member

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