Need FIRC Certificate

[gouravv]

I need FIRC (Foreign Inward Remittance Certificate) certificate for the work done and earnings in FY2015-2016.

I choose "Direct to Local Bank" transfer option. So need FIRC document from the intermediary bank that performed currency conversion (Dollars to INR), before transferring to my local bank account.

[gouravv]

Hi @Goran,

I need FIRC (Foreign Inward Remittance Certificate) certificate for the work done and earnings in FY2015-2016. I choose "Direct to Local Bank" transfer option.

[gouravv]

Hi Sridhar,

Did you get any option how to get FIRC to show in GST or something else to proof them?

[gouravv]

Ok and How I can get FIRC for the same year?

[pradeephele · Accepted solution]

Hi Gourav,

While we are not a bank and do not produce the FIRC (Foreign Inward Remittance Certificate), we can request the FIRC information from the payment processor who sends your payment and we can forward that to you. Please note that some banks can only provide the Disbursement Receipt or Proof of Transfer and not the actual FIRC certificate, and a FIRC may not be available for older withdrawals. You’ll need to talk to your bank for assistance in those cases. For more information about FIRC, please see this help article. If you need a FIRC, please contact Upwork Support:

1. Select Get Support at the bottom of this or any Help center page
2. Type a question or topic and select "Send." The bot will find relevant Help articles for you.
3. If we don't find the information you need after a few tries, you’ll see an option under the article selections to "Contact Support"
4. Select "Contact Support" and follow the options provided

You’ll need to provide us with your transaction ID, the date of withdrawal, and the amount in INR. 

Thank you

Pradeep

[sunderdeepsingh]

Hi Pradeep,

You simply cannot ignore this hassle as this involves multiple parties and FIRC issue is much bigger than you are anticipating. Our local banks where money gets hit as NEFT refuse to acknowledge it as Foreign Payment and they say we have got it from Standard Chartered Bank (Maybe Wells Fargo sends money to Standard Chartered for conversion). If we visit Standard Chartered too, they refuse to issue FIRC too. This put us in a tough situation because we have to pay 18% GST despite not providing services in India and not charging our Clients GST. You have to find some way out to issue FIRC to your Indian Freelancers as if we start getting more tax notices, it will put us in a huge trouble.

[bajajujjwal]

Were you able to solve this issue?

I am still facing the same

[brijeshvadukia]

Hi @pradip, We have the same problem, Our GST Advisor is asking for the FIRC document. Please suggest.

[6e9441c4]

Hello Pradeep, 

Thanks for the info. Is there is any automatic process for doing this, or we need to do it constaly by giving the transaction id every time to the help and support. We need to do this atleast every month. It would be much easier, if we have an option in the setting as well. 

Thanks 

Ankit Bansal

[759e32fa]

Hi Ankit,

Thank you for reaching out. I can see that you've already raised a support ticket regarding your concern. You can access your support tickets here. Note that support requests are responded to in the order they are received. Kindly allow 24-48 hours for the team to follow up with you and assist you further.

[sajal36]

Hi Annie, Why there is no standard solution to FIRC issue. All freelancer rasing the support ticket is not the right way. Can you please get FIRC issue resolved and publish it as guiideline for all who required the same. Regards Sajal Sharma

[pradeephele]

Hi Sajal,

As advised in the solution for this thread, Upwork is not a bank and does not produce FIRC on its end. FIRC can only be provided by a banker to their customers if they receive payments in foreign currency.

We extend our support to assist freelancers with FIRC by requesting the same from the payment processor who sends your payment. For this, we need to forward a request with additional information for your withdrawal so that our payment processor can generate this document for you.

Thank you,

Pradeep

[sajal36]

Hi Pradeep, 

           Agree. However this can be documented as process to obtain FIRC on request. Regards Sajal

[deaninfotech]

Hi Gourav,

I got a similar notification in 2020 (for Service Tax) asking to provide the FIRCs for the earnings made in FY 2015-16. At the time, elance was active until Oct 2015 and elance used Western Union to transfer in INR.

I tried everything - wrote to my HDFC bank, wrote to upwork and wrote to Western Union => They said check with Convera (new company who apparently took over that business from Western Union). I wrote to Convera as well. Fortunately, I got reply from all of them but everyone said one thing - We can't help you!!! FIRCs are not available because transactions were paid in INR to India.

I provided all the communication and the invoices to the GST department. Still, yesterday I got another notice asking to pay about 14.5% Service Tax + Equal Amount of Penalty + Applicable Interest (from 2016 till date) on the "export" income I showed in my Service Tax Return. So, just because I withdrew the amount in INR (and fundamentally I didn't do any cheating or fraud), I now have to pay a huge sum of tax, penalty etc.

@upwork - If you are unable to help us in providing FIRCs (because money was withdrawn in INR), why don't you stop giving us an option to withdraw locally?? I can see lot of posts from community members on this topic, but still there is no action being taken from your end. As per Indian GST laws, if the payments are not received in foreign convertible currency, then those payments cannot be considered against export services and we as agencies/freelancers have to pay applicable taxes to the government in lieu of the same. So, before more agencies/freelancers become victim of this, why don't you remove the option to withdraw locally? Trust me there is a huge monetary penatly and a massive mental harrasment in such cases. I am sure my fellow members will agree to it.

[nis_123]

Hi Ankit, 

Did you get resolution on your issue ? I'm new on upwork . Do i also need to worry about this FIRC certificate and I'm also using local to bank transfer option to withdraw my payments. 

[abhishekkhandelw]

Hi Ankit, you ultimately paid the penalties or was there any success with the authorities finally?? 

[zendigital]

Upwork has basically left the Indian freelancers to fend for themselves. The "Certificate of Earnings" in $ provided by Upwork is meanigless as GST dept doesn't recognize it. 

Can't charge GST on hourly contracts as there's no invoice. Freelancers end up paying: 20% Upwork Fee + 1% TDS + 30% income tax + 18% GST even if 100% of the income is from overseas clients. The system needs an overhaul.

[ashrafkhan81]

If you withdraw Upwork earnings via local bank transfer you will not get FIRC from your bank nor will Upwork issue the certificate.

To get FIRC you need to get the payment into your account in either of the following ways: 

- Wire Transfer to your Indian account, if you do this your Bank is actually receiving dollars and can issue you FIRC certificate. The cost of Wire Transfer from Upwork is USD 30 and the exchange rate is applied by your bank. For local bank transfer the exchange rate applied is either by Upwork or Upwork associate company who is making the transfer. 

- Open a Payoneer Virtual account and send funds from Upwork to that account using ACH, ACH transfer is free of cost, but Payoneer charges multiple fees but they also issue FIRC certificates I have received several FIRC certificates in the past. 

- Paypal. But this is the most expensive solution. Upwork charges $2 per withdrawal to Paypal, then Paypal charges a 4.4% fee, and the Paypal exchange rate is the worst. 

Payoneer is the hassel-free solution. Because the FIRC is generated automatically and will be available for downloads always. You are getting the worst deal with Paypal, in terms of fee and exchange rates. If you go the Wire transfer route you have to keep visiting and asking your bank manager for the certificate they may or may not issue the certificate in time. 

I only have experience with Payoneer.

[nis_123]

Hi Ashraf

Does payoneer works in india as well ? How can we add the payoneer account on upwork as I did not see any option to add payoneer account on upwork ?

Thanks

Abhishek

[tinker_bell3]

Hi Abhishek,

The availability of payment methods may vary depending on location. The options available in your location can be found when you go here. 

[ashrafkhan81]

Payoneer is available in India and is very efficient and offers very good exchange rates and fast service. But Upwork does not support Payoneer for India & Russia. I also freelance on other platforms, those platforms have Payoneer as a payment option and within 2 days I get my funds transferred and within 2-3 days of fund receipt in Payoneer, FIRC certificate is made available for download. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, you will need to open a virtual bank account in Payoneer, for now, they offer USD, GBP and EURO currency account for free other currencies are available for paid users. 

To transfer funds from Upwork -> Payoneer follow these steps:

- Open Payoneer Account (Add your Indian bank account and complete the verification and setup) 

- Open a Virtual USD account in Payoneer 

- Add that Virtual Account details to Upwork as a payment method and choose (Direct to U.S. Bank (USD) 

- When making a new transfer withdraw from Upwork to that Virtual Account (takes 2-3 days) to get the funds into the Paynooer account.

- Payoneer automatically transfers the funds to your Indian account the next day.

- after 2-3 days FIRC is made available. 

Hope that helps.

[kgaurav_9]

Thanks for sharing this. FIRC Certificate is a new mess, Indian Freelancers are going through. Try to withdraw your payment through PayPal or Payoneer because they will give you FIRC Certificate for every amount withdrawal you have made successfully, at no cost. I knew this from a Payoneer event, I attended in 2022. 

Know more:

• PayPal - https://www.paypal.com/in/webapps/mpp/firc-certificate
• Payoneer - https://www.payoneer.com/in/solutions/digital-firc/

[sridhar_orion]

Guys,

I'm still in communication with the service tax department. I spoke with a few people and what they say is "A non-resident bank can pay in Indian Rupees through their partner bank".

When it comes to Local Fund Transfer, as far as I understand, Upwork's bank Wells Fargo has given instructions to it's partner bank Standard Chartered to pay us (freelancers) debiting the INR account.

People in the know how say that we need a letter from Upwork stating that the billing and payment are done in USD and Upwork has transferred the funds in USD to their bank Wells Fargo. 

I have already communicated this to Upwork, but making the customer care team of Upwork to understand this proving to be a big task.

I have attached the circular stating the non resident banks can pay in INR for your reference. You can also consult this with your CA. 

[abhishekkhandelw]

any luck you had with the service tax department?? I am facing the same issue and with no FIRC available it seems I will end up paying a considerable amount which I never accounted for.

[akaruilabs]

Thank you for this helpful information. This is by far the ONLY helpful information I have seen on this topic. Upwork must provide clear solutions to this problem (even for a fee). Those like you who have been using LFT so far are in big trouble. 

[ravisolankitrs]

Do anyone have idea how to get FIRC for local bank transfer ?

[pradeephele]

Hi Ravi,

Thank you for your message. Please contact your bank to request an FIRC certificate.

Thank you,

Pradeep

[bitsharma10p]

it is my humble request to upwork team that they should help us getting forigen inward remittence certificate for the money we withdraw using direct local bank method,

[andregutierrez22]

Hi Shobhit, Upwork is not an Authorized Dealer Category 1 Bank in India, so we don't issue FIRC. You could check with the bank or payment method you use to withdraw your earnings from Upwork, they may be able to assist you with getting the form. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[sajal36]

Funny thing is everyone is facing problem and there is no interest in providing the solution. It seems just going in circles. Even if you see the community messages this is persistent problem since long and it is still in circle there too. Only see the problem reporter lose hope and just sit back accept the short coming.