How legal can activity on Upwork be?

Question

Upwork

I'm thinking of legalizing my future earnings on Upwork. Tax resident of the Russian Federation.
A few questions:
I saw a lot of arguments for paying 18% VAT on commissions. I suppose that, as usual, the issue will be finally resolved at the last moment, already next year.
But then I carefully read the "Fee and ACH Authorization Agreement":
"Unless Tiered Pricing (defined below) applies, we will charge you a Service Fee of 10% of the Freelancer Fees (“Straight Pricing”)."
1) Is "Tiered Pricing" specified anywhere in the Act of Acceptance?
2) If not, then what to say in a hypothetical check, why is the commission 5%, although the default offer is 10%?
3) Received a letter from Upwork: 0% commission from referred clients. Is this not documented anywhere? Indeed, in theory, we can say that I brought all the clients myself and Upwork did not take any commissions.
Also, for the future:
4) When closing an IP, what problems will arise with a lack of documentation? Immediately expect a fine for failure to provide a primary?
And as an option:
5) Does it make sense to work through offshore? As far as I understand, for a tax resident of the Russian Federation, this is the cost of the offshore itself ($300-$2000 per year) + 13% personal income tax.
PS:
6) Does anyone even consider Upwork as a real career living in Russia?
In 1-2 years, our authorities will pay attention to Upwork, and I see 2 scenarios for the development of events:
- Upwork will open a representative office in the Russian Federation and all data will flow directly to the tax authorities, which will expose the "black" half of freelancers in the Russian Federation.
- Upwork will refuse to cooperate and will be blocked for storing data of Russian users outside the Russian Federation, which will substitute the "white" half of freelancers in the Russian Federation.
And the second option seems to me more likely.

Answer 1

Don't get too carried away. Just open an IP, pay 6% of what fell on the calculation, and just in case, set aside another 6% for fines. You can switch to a patent from the new year - generally excellent. Accounting somewhere in the Elbe, an account in the Vanguard.
But if you are really afraid of fines, and you want to do everything as correctly as possible, go to Modul-bank or Tochka, they have a bang there. service and tight currency controls, maybe they'll lay enough straw to avoid fines. And perhaps not.

Answer 2

probably when paying taxes with an upwork,
what does this have to do with checking? the answer is no
fuck is this to testify to you ? write it down on a piece of paper and hang it in a frame, here’s your evidence, it also describes the mechanism that the client must register from your link and only such a client is considered yours, and you write some kind of heresy, you probably just didn’t read the conditions
ask the accountant, anyway you will need it to do business, if you are afraid of something, regite it
makes sense to work through an offshore, a dubious lot of expenses and a headache, there is no benefit.
ps
if you are a sane person and consider upwork as a career, then now you can forget everything about it, and in five years, when the authorities will turn it around, and earlier they would have done it, move to another country and live in peace.
Upwork will not be able to transfer the old data, which means that no one will set anyone up except ourselves.
No one will block anyone, this is generally out of stupidity, or rather, I would even say it would be the best option, just everyone would work through all sorts of proxies and VPNs and the state would have nothing to dig into, are you working with upwork? no, I don’t work, he’s blocked to you, I can’t work with him

Answer 3

Completely illegal, if I were you, I would prepare for searches, seize equipment and prepare tea right away.

Answer 4

I’ll only say about 5, because on some other points I don’t know or ignore something:
Offshore companies have other concerns: CFC laws, concerns about those same fines for illegal operations (75-100% of the amount so far), infa for sure it may also be revealed in a year or two. And suddenly again the global crisis?
Although, it depends on what you consider as offshore? (By the way, the cost of maintenance also depends on this).
For example, in Cyprus, as far as I know, it will cost just those $2k. (Although, Cyprus is hardly considered offshore). Plus - 12.5% ​​income tax (Cyprus) + taxes in the Russian Federation.
The result will be 20 percent (or more). And not the fact that much less will have to bathe in the end.
I myself thought about how to avoid all this fuss with currency control / tax / IP / VAT / etc., but so far it turns out that it is cheaper and easier to stay in the Russian Federation. And money after paying all taxes can be stored / used in different ways

Answer 5

I saw an advertisement somewhere for a bank, it seems Tochka, who offered a direct package for the legalization of Upwork. But I would ask their lawyer some tricky questions, and I doubt the answers would please me.
2) Do not forget that those 5%, 10% or 20% of the commission are funds not returned to the territory of the Russian Federation. And your Upwork account is not an account with an authorized bank, and getting money into it is also not a good thing.
6) Do not think about the authorities of the Russian Federation as those who will do themselves badly in a directed way. Of course, they can block Upwork, but they are unlikely to. After all, the Russian Federation needs an influx of currency.
4) I don’t remember that there were any problems at all when closing the IP. But it was a long time ago. I never had a primary school at all, for which I even paid some penny fines a couple of times. But now maybe the fines are not cheap, I don’t know.