Hello to all,

I just received this email:

Dear Author,
During 2014 the Internal Revenue Service changed the rules and began requiring a tax id number (TIN) in order for a person being paid for US Source Income to qualify for reduced withholding rates due to tax treaties between our respective countries. With a valid TIN the withholding is to be at the tax treaty rate. Without the TIN the withholding is to be at the default 30% rate. The tax treaty rates vary from 0% to about 10%, so that is a very significant improvement over the 30% default rate.
For 2015 we will have to follow these rules for all payments; payments to persons without a TIN on file will have withholding at 30%. For 2014 we still have about a month before we have to report the payments, so it is not too late to do something about it. Please provide us with the Tax ID you use for reporting in your country. Better yet would be a US Tax ID, we recommend you apply for one because it may be required in the future. Please provide your local Tax ID immediately so we can include it in our 2014 reporting; it will be required for 2015 payments in order to avoid the 30% withholding rule.  Please use the  "My Tax Form" link under your account at FeaturePics.com


I don't know what am I supposed to do. Many of us do not have any Tax ID as we don't need it for tax purposes in our countries. And W-8BEN forms states "7. Foreign tax identifying number, if any (optional)".
It has not been requested by any other agency so far. I know that 30% of few dollars made on FeaturePics are not worth mentioning. However -  will other agencies require Tax ID soon or is it FP's nonsense?

Thanks.