# Taxes and invoicing for UGC creators, what is actually confirmed UGC pay is self-employment income on every marketplace this guide checked. Beyond that general fact, the exact reporting threshold is a live, moving target that this guide does not try to settle with a single number. ## You are paid as a contractor, not an employee Every marketplace and agency covered in this guide pays creators directly, not through payroll, which means no tax is withheld at the time of payment. Whatever a brief or platform states as your rate is the gross amount before you set aside anything for taxes yourself. In the United States, this generally makes you self-employed for tax purposes on that income, responsible for reporting it yourself whether or not any single platform sends you a tax form for it. ## The W-9 and W-8BEN forms you may be asked to fill in A platform operating in the US will typically ask a US-based creator to complete a W-9 form, which supplies your taxpayer information so the platform can issue the right tax paperwork at year end if required. A creator outside the US working with a US platform is more often asked for a W-8BEN instead, which is the form for a non-US person certifying their foreign status rather than a W-9. Which form applies depends on where you are a tax resident, not where the platform is based. ## The reporting threshold is not something this guide states as a fixed number Various sources circulate different dollar thresholds for when a platform must issue a US 1099-NEC for contractor income, and the exact current figure is being confirmed against the IRS's own instructions rather than settled here. Rather than print a specific dollar figure that may already be wrong by the time you read this, the practical point is simpler and does not depend on the exact threshold: if you earned anything from UGC work, keep your own record of it, because the obligation to report self-employment income does not disappear just because a platform decides the amount was too small to send you a form for. Check the current 1099-NEC instructions on the IRS's own site, or ask a tax professional, for the figure that applies to the tax year you are filing, rather than relying on a number repeated on a blog. ## Keeping your own record, platform by platform - Billo pays weekly via Stripe, with funds clearing roughly three days after approval and arriving one to two business days after that; a running note of each approved job and its payout date is enough to reconcile later. - Insense releases funds to an in-platform wallet on approval, then out to PayPal in about four business days or to a bank account in about seven; log the approval date and the withdrawal date separately, since they are not the same event. - JoinBrands pays into a virtual wallet and then out to PayPal, once a week on the free plan or without a withdrawal limit on its paid Premium plan; keep each wallet-to-PayPal transfer as your record rather than relying on the per-job price alone, since the commission (20% free, 15% Premium) is taken before the transfer. - Whatever the platform, a simple spreadsheet row per paid job (date, brand or platform, gross amount, platform fee if stated, net received) is enough to reconstruct a year's income without relying on any one platform's own statement. ## If you work with platforms based outside your own country Every marketplace in this guide is a US-founded platform. A creator based outside the US working with one of them is responsible for their own country's tax rules on that income as well, separately from whichever US form (typically a W-8BEN rather than a W-9) the platform itself asks for. The W-8BEN mainly tells the US platform that US tax withholding generally does not apply to you as a non-US person; it does not relieve you of reporting the income under your own country's rules. If a platform does not ask for any tax form at all before paying you, that is not evidence the income is tax-free. Several of the payout flows described in this guide (a wallet transferring to PayPal, for instance) can run with no form collected up front, and the absence of a form at payment time says nothing about your own reporting obligation afterward. ## Invoicing, where a platform asks for one Some marketplace flows pay automatically with no invoice needed from you, for example Influee's pricing page states content is "automatically processed within 5 to 10 days" of approval with no invoicing required. Others, especially direct-to-brand or agency work outside a marketplace's automated payout, may expect you to send your own invoice. A minimal invoice needs your name or business name, the brand's name, what was delivered and when, the agreed price, and your preferred payment method; keep a copy of every invoice you send alongside your income spreadsheet. ## Setting aside money for taxes as you get paid, rather than at year end Because nothing is withheld from a contractor payout, the money that lands in your account or wallet is not fully yours to spend; some portion of it is owed later, and the exact portion depends on your own country's rules and tax bracket, not a figure this guide can state generally. A simple habit that avoids a bad surprise is moving a set percentage of every payout, decided with a tax professional or your own country's guidance rather than a number from a blog, into a separate account as soon as it arrives, rather than waiting until a filing deadline to work out what you owe from money already spent. Reviewed November 13, 2026. This is not tax advice. The exact US 1099-NEC reporting threshold was not independently confirmed against the IRS's own current instructions in this research and is deliberately left out rather than stated as a fixed number; check the IRS's own page or a tax professional for the figure that applies to your filing year. ## Sources - [Billo help centre: how and when you'll get paid](https://help.billo.app/en/articles/5830098-for-creators-how-and-when-you-ll-get-paid) - [Insense help: creator payments](https://help-creators.insense.pro/4551) - [JoinBrands, creators premium subscription plans](https://help.joinbrands.com/en/articles/13862392-creators-premium-subscription-plans) - [Influee pricing](https://influee.co/pricing/ugc-creation) - [IRS, Form 1099-NEC instructions](https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1099mec)