On Wednesday night we went to a Dymocks Camberwell dinner talk featuring John Connolly.
Connolly is here in Australia for the Sydney Writers’ Festival and to promote his latest book, The Wolf in Winter. This is the second time I have heard him speak. He’s an entertaining speaker, and very generous with his time in talking to fans. It was an enjoyable night.
If you get a chance to hear him, I recommend you take it.
The CFO from our agent’s company emailed the other day. Did either of us have ITINs?
“No, but we’ll find out how to get one,” we said, and went looking on the internet.
An ITIN is an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN). It’s used for people who pay tax in the US but are not eligible for a social security number. In Australian terminology, it’s a US tax file number for people who aren’t from the US.
We qualify as non-resident aliens, which is always nice if you write science fiction, don’t you think.
If you don’t have an ITIN the person paying your money (in this case the publisher) withholds 30% of the money and sends it to the US tax office, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Australia does the same thing for non-Australian residents.
We could just write the 30% off as lost money. However, the tax treaty between US and Australia is very good. The tax rate for things like royalties is 5%. That’s means if we don’t get an ITIN we lose 25% of our income in unnecessary taxes. Add in agent fees and suddenly we’ve lost almost half our income.
Did we want an ITIN? Definitely.
We determined fairly quickly that we need to fill out a W-7 form and send it away. For this we needed:
There’s a lot of information on the web about obtaining ITINs, but not a lot specifically about Australia.
The process for obtaining them had changed (just a little) over time, so there was conflicting information about what documentation was required, particularly with regard to what constituted identification. Some sites said you had to send the original passport, some said you could send a certified copy. Most sites said the certification had to come from the US embassy or a registered certification company. We weren’t sure which options were valid currently.
Also, on the internet a lot of the information applicable to writers had been written self-published authors, many of whom had opted for an EIN instead of an ITIN, because they were easier to get. This wasn’t applicable to us.
So we went hunting further. We called our own Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) first, then we called the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
We went through this process in May 2014.
We called DFAT first. They told us to ring the Passport Office – 13 1232 and choose option 0.
The Passport Office confirmed that they could do an apostille certificate for us, and gave us the address (including which floor) to go to, opening hours, etc.
The number we called: +1 267 941 1000
Calling IRS is a lot like calling the ATO. You hold on the line for ages (27 minutes, in this case) until someone answers. You explain what you want. “I’ll just put you through to the appropriate department,” and you hold on the line for another 20 minutes.
A cultural aside here. Everyone at the IRS introduced themselves formally. “This is Mrs Brown”, “This is Ms Green”. I remember, when we first contacted our agent, we started out with ‘Dear Ms Blasdell’ because the advice on the internet recommended the formality. It wasn’t until a few emails in that we started using her first name. It actually felt strange, because here in Australia it would have been ‘Dear Caitlin’ right from the query, and the tax person would have introduced themselves as, “You’re talking to Yvette,” or similar.
Also, a tip. After they introduce themselves the consultant will give their ID. Be ready and write it down. We didn’t. We just wrote down the name. We got excellent service from the IRS person who answered our questions, so we went online and filled in a feedback form to say so. However, our consultant’s name is a common one so it’s hard to believe the feedback will get back to the right person.
We were pretty sure we did, but it always pays to ask. The answer:
Yes.
For all the reasons given above.
We already knew we wanted to use our passports for proof-of-identity. Otherwise you need multiple documents.
We also knew that we needed a specific type of certification of the passport called an apostille. Our big question was, who would IRS would accept the apostille from? Some sites said only the IRS or a US embassy, some sites said IRS/US Embassy/approved people.
We knew that our own Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) could provide such a service. We just didn’t know if the IRS would accept it from DFAT.
The IRS consultant said certification could come from any one of:
The agency who issues the passport
IRS
US embassy
Certification acceptance agency
DFAT is the agency that issues Australian passports. So DFAT certification it was.
Aside from the passport to prove who we were, we knew we also had to provide evidence that we were going to be paid US money. We didn’t know whether it had to be a letter from the publisher, or whether one from our agent would suffice. Or even if we could just wait until we got the contract and send them a copy of the contract.
The consultant said:
The letter must be from the person paying the money, not the person distributing it. That is, the publisher, not the agent. Furthermore, it has to contain specific information.
It must be on the company letterhead.
It must show your name. (Our name, in this case. One for Sherylyn, one for me.)
It must be signed.
Even better, she referred us to a document on the IRS website. Document number 1915—which for some reason we hadn’t seen in any of our ITIN searches, I don’t know why. She said:
There is a sample letter on page 35, showing what needs to be included.
Document 1915 is Understanding Your IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number ITIN. It covers pretty much everything you need to know to fill out the form.
The answer to that was:
It depends on how much tax has been withheld.
She looked up the tax treaty and told us that the tax rate for royalties between Australia and the US is 5%. Thus
If you have been taxed more than 5% then yes, to get back the difference.
If we did have to lodge a tax return, what form should we use?
1040NR.
Yes.
You must fill out the W8-BEN and send it to the payer of the income. Your ITIN should be included on that form.
The consultant was extremely helpful, and very patient. We Skyped the call, and the lag on the line was terrible. If you’ve ever watched the Eurovision song contest, the delay was about the same as the delay you see when they’re giving the scores. All up, the call took over an hour.
The one question we didn’t ask but wished we had was, “What is the treaty number?*” We know we can get this number from the web, but since the consultant looked it up to get the tax rate anyway, it would have been nice to have it confirmed.
So far everyone has been extremely helpful.
Next steps are to:
We’ll keep you posted on the process.
Update July 2014. We got our ITINs. It was relatively painless. Read all about it here.
* The question we should have been asking is what is our tax treaty paragraph number. Big difference. It’s all explained in part 2.
I’ve been living in my own science fictional world the last few days, where my sense of well-being is directly proportional to the level of cold-and-flu drugs in my system. The recommended daily dosage wears off much faster than they say on the packet, so there are times in between feeling okay and feeling wretched where you’re just waiting for the next lot of pills to kick in.
You can feel when they do.
Last night I took a batch of pills at midnight, but they didn’t kick in until 1:20 am (exactly). Between those two times I sat up in bed. My nose was a tap, continually running. I couldn’t lie down because otherwise the gunk ran down the back of my throat into my lungs. My throat was so swollen it was hard to breathe. It hurt to cough, but I coughed all the time. Plus, I was freezing cold even though I had a doona and two blankets.
My mind wandered.
I started off thinking about the drugs and what they were doing to my system. It wasn’t that long ago that people didn’t have access to the drugs I did (and sometimes they had access to stronger drugs). How has that made us as a people? A lot wimpier about illnesses, I think.
How many lives have medications like this saved? Just drying up the mucus alone will save on lung-related complications like pneumonia.
From there I moved on to thinking about science fiction. So many of the things written about in the golden age of science fiction are now fact. Drugs for common ailments. Cars that drive themselves (well, there’s one, so far). Going to the moon/Mars. Genetic engineering. Mobile phones.
One of the reasons it was the golden age is because back then the ideas were so new and fresh.
Fresh ideas seem harder to come by nowadays. Not because they don’t exist. They do. But in the golden age there were no precedents. We didn’t have a strong history of science fiction to draw on. Every idea was new. Every idea stretched us in a new way, and made us think.
That’s why it’s great to see stories like Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice winning so many industry awards. Her story does what good science fiction should do. It entertains, it makes you think, and it pushes science fiction just a little further out.
I hope she goes on to win more awards this year.
Like a lot of writers, it’s important to get our main characters’ names right early in the story. The name becomes part of the character, and the longer the character has had that name, the harder it is to change it later on.
Case in point. We wanted to name a character ‘Clemence Gardinier’. Because we were on a military ship she’d be known by her surname. Gardinier suited who she was, and we liked the French tonings.
But we already have Gardiner as a major secondary character in another book. So we found another French surname, Favager. Favager means blacksmith, while Gardinier means gardener, so they’re both names based on occupations, and yet … neither of us can get used to Favager as a character. We’re going to have to rename her altogether.
We have a couple of baby name books around the house. I’m sure most writers do, but I have to admit that my favourite name site has been, for a long time Behind the Name, along with its associated Behind the Surname.
I like this site because when we name characters we’re often looking for ‘locality’ name. Maybe Irish names, or Scandinavian names or Eastern European names, so it’s easy to pick a starting point.
Once you have a name you can look up the meaning, because sometimes it’s not just the name, it’s what the name means.
There are other interesting things you can use too. We use the random name generator a lot for minor characters.
The name element page is great for world building, especially when you’re writing fantasy. For example, the Germanic ‘alf’ means a supernatural being, so if we were writing a fantasy we might add ‘alf’ to the start of all our supernatural beings.
Choosing names in science fiction is easier in some ways and harder in others. To me, science fiction is more an amalgam of names than anything else. If you have free movement between worlds you’ll end up with names like we have in our own time. A mixture of names from everywhere.
It’s much like when you stay behind after a movie to watch the credits, and there are names from seemingly every country in the world rolling up.
We are prepared. Ready and raring to go. (Actually, we’ve already started, but that’s a technicality.)
We have cleaned up our desks.
We have planned.
That’s right. We have a plan.
The first couple of months are stretch targets, but after that we should be comfortable.
So much so that we sneaked (or is that snuck?) an extra orange line into our plan, just above the November 2015 date. We will be very happy if we fit that one in.
It’s Thursday night and I’m sitting here with the door open, listening to the traffic . There’s a truck stopped on the road outside, engine idling, diesel fumes wafting in the door. It’s been there for fifteen minutes now.
It’s the start of the Easter break and traffic is at a standstill.
Easter to me always invokes memories of travel. Of bumper-to-bumper traffic, of leaving early and finding the roads already crowded. Back in the days when the freeway only extended a hundred kilometres north of the city you slowed to a crawl as soon as you hit the single carriageway. Nowadays, it’s a little better, but sometimes not by much.
You’d stop at a roadhouse, or in later years, McDonalds. They were always frantically busy, full of white-faced travellers just like you, desperate for coffee and a toilet break (and not necessarily in that order).
Then back onto the road you’d go.
Only to do it again in the opposite direction come Monday night.
It’s like driving at peak-hour. For 300km.
We don’t travel at Easter any more unless we absolutely have to. The roads are just too busy. It takes the whole weekend just to recover from the drive, and as long afterwards to recover from the drive home.
And yet … I remember those trips with nostalgia. I wouldn’t want to do them again, but they were good times, fun times, and the road trip is part of those memories. Sometimes, when I see the white-faced travellers stop by at our local McDonalds on their way through the city, I want to be out on the road again.
I read Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor this week. If you haven’t read it I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment, so although there are no spoilers, the rest of this post is after the break.*
We collected Thor from the picture framers today. It’s an original drawing from one of the Marvel Comics artists. I won it as a prize when I bought tickets to see the movie Thor.
Sadly, it’s been sitting on the bookshelf in the office for months but we finally got it framed, and it looks awesome. I’m playing the soundtrack movie right now too. Very appropriate.
It looks so good I thought about putting the image up on the blog. Then I thought, hang on, can I do that? I own the picture, but do I need to get permission from the artist before I even show it in the public domain like that?
Probably.
So all I can do is tell you about it.
Trust me, it looks fantastic.
I’m a sucker for a good writing conference, especially a genre one. I like to meet other writers who are interested in writing, and I love it when they write the same types of stories as I do. Plus there’s something about attending sessions run by people in the business that sends me home more enthused about my own writing.
When I heard about the Conflux Writers’ Day I wanted go, but I couldn’t leave Melbourne until late Friday night, and had to be back early Sunday morning. Do you know how many planes don’t fly in or out of Canberra Friday and Saturday nights?
It’s on this weekend. You can find more details at the Conflux site. If you’re going, have a great time. And if it’s on again next year, you’ll probably see me there.
Last night the protagonist in our latest book had a momentary regret just before she lapsed into unconsciousness. She could have done so much …
“You always give your characters momentary regrets,” Sherylyn said. “It’s a pet phrase of yours. Tegan, in Potion¸ has a momentary regret because she doesn’t get to work with Alun. Acquard has a momentary regret about Gardiner. Even Ean has a momentary regret in Linesman.” (Or had, I’m not sure if she made me take that one out.)
“Apart from the fact that you’re telling, not showing, it’s a pet phrase. Get rid of it.”
If I don’t get rid of it, she will, and we’ll work together to convey the same meaning—without the momentary regret—or get rid of it altogether if we don’t need it. I suspect it will go altogether. The story doesn’t need it.
That’s the value of a co-writer.
Even a good alpha or beta reader can point out pet idiosyncrasies.
I have other pet writing habits. I’ve blogged before about names. If I’m naming the characters you can usually pick who’s the good guy and who’s the bad just by their name.
So far, incidentally, we have two Fergus’s and one Feargal (and I think they’re unique every time) and I’ve lost count of how many Caterina’s.
I’m not the only one who does that, by the way. One of my favourite authors loves the names Connor and Jake. If they’re in a book I know they’re the good guy or the love interest. Never the bad guy.
I’m thinking of trying to convince Sherylyn we should do a Hitchcock. His trademark was to put himself into every movie. Why can’t we have a trademark? Each of our characters will have a momentary regret.
Somehow I can’t see her buying it.