News

YouTube To Start Deducting Taxes From Non-US Content Creators

Published

5 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.

Also Read: The First Space Hotel Is Set To Open In 2027

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

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.