Common questions about payouts and taxes

All partners enrolling in a new program must provide valid payout and tax details to complete their enrollment and receive payments. An enrollment is considered complete only after Microsoft has validated your payout and tax profile.

You may also need to update your information if the rules for your program change, or if aspects of your profile expire or become outdated. If that happens, your Overview page will show a status of Action required – Update bank and/or tax profile.

For detailed information on how to update payment and tax details in Partner Center, see Set up your payout account and tax forms.

It could be that you don’t have the required permissions, or that you’re logged in with an account that doesn't have the required permissions. For example, only incentive admins for your MPN location can create or manage payout and tax profiles. Contact your organization administrator to manage permissions for bank and tax.

Contact your Account administrator to add more domains to the Azure AD account.

It depends on your organization's needs. Payment profiles are created at an organization level, which enables for the same bank profile to be assigned across multiple MPN IDs and programs within an organization. In most cases, you can either reuse an existing profile or create a new one.

There may be exceptions, however, when applying your bank profile to different countries or regions, because local bank or tax rules may apply.

Tax profiles created for an MPN location get reused and automatically populated when the same MPN location participates in another program. But there can be exceptions. For example, the payout rules of a new incentive program may require additional details for the tax profile.

If your company is invited for multiple programs, you can use the same payment account for all your programs, or you can choose to have different payment accounts for the different programs.

It's the company’s responsibility to ensure that the role of incentives admin - who has the permissions to edit this information - is only given to appropriate employees.

If a tax profile is expired or is about to expire, that means that the tax form that you had provided to Microsoft needs to be updated. Use the following steps to update your tax profile:

1. Sign in to the Partner Center dashboard, and then select the Settings gear icon.
2. Select Account settings, expand the Payout and tax section, and then select Payout and tax profile.
3. Select Tax profile
4. Check the column Expiration Date and go to the tax profile that is expired or about to expire.
5. Select Edit to launch the tax profile edit process.
6. In the tax form section, provide the updated details.

• The customer order may not be eligible for payout yet. For non-enterprise customer orders, Microsoft must receive customer payment before publisher earning becomes eligible. For enterprise customer orders, your earnings will be available 1-2 days after Purchase order date. Verify Order status in Orders reports.
• Earnings from transactions before July 2019 may not be shown in the transaction history report. Check Historical Statements in Payout Download.
• Check the time frame of payout cycle and understand when your earnings should appear in the payout statement.

• If the order was partially paid by your customer, your earning amount will be based on the partially paid amount after deducting fee and appropriate tax.
• Check tax remit responsibility by country. In countries where tax is Microsoft-responsible, Microsoft collects and deducts the tax from publisher earnings. The transaction amount shown in the statement is after tax amount. See Tax details.
• Offers have a store service fee at 3%, leaving an earnings rate of 97%.

Further reading: Commercial Marketplace Publisher Agreement, Payout policy details, Payment threshold, method, and time frame, Getting paid, Tax details, Transaction history

Use AssetID, orderID, and line item ID appearing in payout transaction history report with analytic orders and usage reports. Use this mapping:

• Payout Transaction History.AssetID = order.OrderID
• Payout Transaction History.OrderID & LineItem = Usage.UsageReferenceID [OrderID:LineItemID]

• First, using your assetID, check customer orders in Orders reports.
• Check customer channel for your customer subscription in customers report.
• For enterprise customers, publisher earnings appear in the statement 1-2 days after the Purchase Order date.
• For non-enterprise customers, publisher earnings appear in the statement 1-2 days after customer payment is received.

Further reading: Transaction history, Orders dashboard in commercial marketplace analytics

• Ensure your Payout status and Tax profile status are shown as valid on the overview page.
• You may not have met the minimum threshold for a payment. Earnings must be at least USD50 to receive a payment.

You can hold payments in Payout Profile. To do so, select Hold and Microsoft will hold payment to you until you release the hold.

The selection of the payment profile country, as part of the Partner Center registration, determines which payout options and currency are available.

• For EFT (bank) payments in the United States, only USD currency is available to be selected. For bank payments in all other countries, all available currencies are available for selection if they’re supported by the pay to bank.
• PayPal as a payout option is allowed for Azure Marketplace in some countries and regions. For a complete list, see Payment thresholds, methods, and time frames.

The payout currency is based on the currency you selected in payout profile. The purchase currency is based on the currency the customer paid.

Payment adjustments are payment corrections to accommodate compensatory adjustments such as system issues. In the payout statement, ReasonCode specifies the reason for the adjustment. These aren't meant to reconcile directly to individual transactions.

Further reading: Commercial Marketplace Publisher Agreement, Payout policy details, Tax details, Payment threshold, method, and time frame

In transaction history download, find the Tax model column. This shows MS Managed or ISV Managed. See country-specific tax rules and payout implications in Tax details.

Go to the Payout Payment page, then the List of Payment section. A link to the Service Fee tax form appears for a payment that has the Service Fee Tax.

Go to the Profile page to view your year-end tax forms.

Withholding tax is applicable for U.S. publishers who filed a W-9 form. Withholding tax is calculated on a monthly payment.

Further reading: Commercial Marketplace Publisher Agreement, Payout policy details

1. Check your roles. You must have the financial contributor or account owner role to access the payout statement.
2. From the dashboard, select the Payouts workspace to view your payout statement. Choose between Transaction History, Payment, and Download.

Further reading: Payout roles and permissions, Transaction history

See Transaction history for a detailed list of the attributes and their meanings.

Earning status shows your earnings as either unprocessed, processed, or sent.

• Unprocessed: Earnings are in an escrow period until maturity date.
• Processed: Earnings have matured and are prepared into a monthly payment. Payments are released by 15th of each month.
• Sent: Payment has been successfully released to your bank based on your payout profile.

Go to the Payout Payment page, then the List of Payment section. A link to the Service Fee tax form appears for a payment that has the Service Fee Tax.

Go to the Payout Payment page, then the List of Payment section. A link to a withholding tax form appears next to a payment. A withholding tax form applies only to selected incentive programs, not to a commercial marketplace payout.

Go to the Profile page to view your year-end tax forms.

Further reading: Transaction history, Transaction history download

Historical statement will show the snapshot of the payout data as of October 2019. Unfortunately, the payout information here doesn't refresh. To receive the latest information, submit a support ticket for the latest data.

Further reading: Transaction history, Transaction history download

Use the Partner Payouts API.

• The Store Service Fee is 3%.
• In your payout statement, Earning Rate specifies the actual payout rate for a given transaction.

• Once your earning is in unprocessed status, you can check maturity date for the month your earnings will be processed for payment. Once your payment is prepared, your earning status will change to “processed”. Microsoft releases payments by the 15th of maturity month.
• For orders paid by credit card, Microsoft holds payments 30 days until the earning is matured.

Further reading: Commercial Marketplace Publisher Agreement, Payout policy details, Tax details, Payment threshold, method, and time frame

Next steps

• Getting paid
• Set up your payout account and tax forms