Withdrawal of earnings

[nasgarova]

Hello. I am from Azerbaijan and I want to know how I can withdraw the earned amount from upwork. I tried paypal but it does not seem working. I would be grateful if freelancers from my country shared their experience.

[g_vasilevski]

Hi Nigar,

To view the available payment methods in your country go to Settings > Get Paid. To learn more about how to add one, check out this Help Article. Thank you.

[89c51bb0]

Hi Nigar, in the past till the end of 2022 it was possible to transfer to your personal account almost at any bank in Azerbaijan. Starting from 2023 the authorities are blocking payments received from Upwork and Payoneer. According to the unoffical source the limitation is applied due to the fact that the tax authorities believe not all freelancers report their earnings that are being withdrawn to their personal accounts. Therefore you need to register a business account which is super easy, but kind of complicated to maintain considering that you will be liable for the timely submission of mandatory reports to various government organization plus will need to pay taxes and social contributions. Failure to do both in time will cause sanctions and headache, the worst scenraio being banned from international travel, all business accounts closed etc. So, have to make sure that you pay your social contributions and taxes on time in accordance with the activity and don't forget to submit your reporting package in time even if there is no activity (you have to report 0 activity) to avoid penalties and sanction. I personally believe it is difficult to manage all this bookeeping, becuase the downside of the system is that it is identical to a bookkeeping standards applied by legal entities (companies) and while many companies have the accountant or financial manager handling this, freelancers have to manage on their own which is very risky as template approach may cause mistakes in the reporting. There is a solution though and all of the accounting and reporting can be outsourced. This is a solution that I found. There is a company that specializes on such operations, I can share contacts if you need. Contact me if you need any further help with it.