News

YouTube To Start Deducting Taxes From Non-US Content Creators

Published

6 years ago

March 17, 2021

youtube to start deducting taxes from non-us content creators

As if YouTubers from outside of the United States were not facing enough challenges as it is, they will soon have one more thing to worry about. That’s because YouTube has recently announced its decision to start deducing taxes from US earnings of all non-US content creators.

The video streaming platform says that it is required by Chapter 3 of the US Internal Revenue Code to collect tax information from all creators outside of the US.

“Over the next few weeks, we’ll be asking you to submit your tax info in AdSense to determine the correct amount of taxes to deduct, if any apply,” explained Google in an email sent to affected YouTubers. “If your tax info isn’t provided by May 31st, 2021, Google may be required to deduct up to 24 percent of your total earnings worldwide.”

In practice, this means that a content creator earning $1,000 from YouTube every month would lose $2,880 each year by choosing not to submit their tax information. If the same YouTube submitted their tax information, only their US earnings would be taxed, so the annual figure would most likely be significantly lower.

Calculating just how much lower it would really be is fairly easy:

Log in to your YouTube account and go to YouTube Analytics > Advanced Mode.
Select a date range in the top-right corner of the analytics page.
Click the Geography button in the main menu bar and select the United States.

You should now be able to see how much of your total YouTube revenue will be subject to US taxes.

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YouTube gives content creators until May 31st, 2021 to submit their tax information, and the company is planning to start deducing taxes on US earnings as early as June. To avoid missing the deadline, you can update your AdSense account right now:

Log in to your AdSense account.
Navigate to Payments > Manage Settings.
Click Manage Tax Info under United States tax info.

News

Microsoft Plans $10 Billion-Plus Gulf Expansion Despite Iran Conflict

Security is shaping Microsoft’s approach, from resilience work with governments to what it will say about how the money splits by country.

Published

4 days ago

September 24, 2026

Nour Nasir

Microsoft

Microsoft is planning more than $10 billion of investment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait through 2030, Vice Chair and President Brad Smith told Reuters, calling the spending schedule aggressive. The Iranian conflict that began on February 28 has not persuaded the company to scale back.

“We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this conflict started, and we are in fact adding to them,” Smith said. The $10 billion-plus total does not, however, show how large those additions are.

The investment, which Smith described as part of Microsoft’s continued infrastructure expansion, is aimed at cloud and AI infrastructure and at the company’s growing regional operations. Microsoft also intends to put more than $400 million into subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.

The spending fits the region’s own ambitions too. Gulf governments have been investing heavily in AI infrastructure as part of a push to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas and turn themselves into global technology hubs. Major cloud and AI providers have been drawn in part by the land and relatively low-cost energy on offer.

Microsoft is widening its partnerships with regional AI companies, though not on identical terms. In 2024, it invested $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi-based G42 for a minority stake, and Smith currently sits on G42’s board. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qatar’s Qai are working with Microsoft on selected priority areas, but Smith said the company does not plan to make capital investments in either.

Also Read: Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

The conflict has added another strand to Microsoft’s work in the region. Since it began, Smith said, the company has supported regional partners with digital resilience assessments, and it is now working with Gulf countries through a digital resilience initiative focused on preparedness and the protection of critical data.

So far, the company has given no country-by-country breakdown of the investment, citing security among other factors. So while the headline figure is public, how Microsoft divides the spending among the four countries is not.