Guides
A forty-country payout checklist
Tax forms, currency, thresholds, and the three compliance questions that hold up almost every first international payment.
Hannah Choi
Ops Manager
Paying someone in another country is straightforward until the first time it is not. This is the checklist we hand new operations hires, in the order the problems usually appear.
Before the first payment
Confirm the working relationship in writing, collect the right tax form for the recipient’s jurisdiction, and check whether your entity has a withholding obligation. These three take a day up front and weeks if you skip them.
Currency and thresholds
Decide whether you pay in your currency or theirs, and write it down. Paying in yours pushes conversion cost onto the recipient, which is legitimate but should never be a surprise. Then check the reporting threshold in both countries, because crossing it quietly is the most common unpleasant discovery.
The three questions that stall things
Who is the contracting entity, is the recipient an individual or a company, and is any part of the work performed in a country where you have a taxable presence. Every stalled first payment we have seen traces back to one of those three being unanswered.
None of this is hard. It is just a list, and having the list is most of the work.
Run your own numbers through Orbit.
Fourteen days free, every module included and no card needed.