Does Bilibili provide payslips for its content creators?

[exoticdisease]

I'm curious to know whether it is possible to get Bilibili to provide payslips for creators who are paid on the platform.  My friend told me that Chinese companies do not normally provide payslips for freelance workers but I struggle to believe this as in the UK it would be unthinkable to not do so, not to mention illegal.  He says that the app just puts money in his account with no warning and no explanation as to how it was calculated or the tax or anything.  How would any freelance workers ever get mortgages to buy property if they don't have payslips?

[Moshen]

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How would any freelance workers ever get mortgages to buy property if they don't have payslips?

 

I don't know what country you live in, but I live in the US and have been 95% freelance/self-employed for more than 40 years.  To get a mortgage (twice) I submitted my previous 2 or 3 years tax returns.  My husband wasn't working, so it was all based on my income.  Not such a big problem, really.

 

Obviously, you just need to make sure you declare your income honestly.

[exoticdisease]

49 minutes ago, Moshen said:

To get a mortgage (twice) I submitted my previous 2 or 3 years tax returns.

I understand that and have done so myself before but the mortgage lender is asking for payslips as well.  Surely, you as a freelancer, also received payslips for the freelance work you did?  Invoices, receipts, whatever you want to call them.

[roddy]

Self-employed in the UK here, and the bank's never asked for anything but tax records (SA302s) and bank statements. I don't have payslips to show them, and while I've sent out many invoices, I've never got one back stamped 'paid' or anything.

[889]

The person issuing the invoice -- you, OP -- is the one who marks a copy of the invoice "PAID" and sometimes sends it to the paying party.

 

So why not take a copy of your invoice and mark it "PAID" along with date and details of the payment.

[Moshen]

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I understand that and have done so myself before but the mortgage lender is asking for payslips as well.  Surely, you as a freelancer, also received payslips for the freelance work you did?  Invoices, receipts, whatever you want to call them.

 

Nope.  No payslips and not once in 40+ years have I been asked to prove my income other than produce my tax returns.  When you file your taxes, you in effect swear that what you've declared is true, and that normally suffices in the US.

 

After all, why would someone officially declare income and pay tax on it if they didn't actually earn it?

[杰.克]

10 hours ago, exoticdisease said:

I'm curious to know whether it is possible to get Bilibili to provide payslips for creators who are paid on the platform.

 

It doesn't provide a payslip. However it does give you a breakdown of your daily earnings in RMB as well as what videos this comes from (and views it relates to). As such you can easily calculate what you earn per month in RMB, which may be of use for accounting purposes. 西瓜视频 also provides the same level of detail.  Similar to Youtube really, which doesn't provide a payslip (by UK expectations - with your insurance number on and tax payments) but just a breakdown of earnings via its adsense programme.

 

[mungouk]

11 hours ago, exoticdisease said:

My friend told me that Chinese companies do not normally provide payslips for freelance workers

 

Is there even such a thing as an official "payslip" in China?  The best I've ever received as an employee (not freelance) was a screen-grab of a line in a spreadsheet.

 

On the other hand, obtaining a tax record (to prove you've paid for a given period) is quite simple if you go to the local tax office.  There's even an app 个人所得税 that you can use to do it, and to do a tax return.  
 

[exoticdisease]

On 7/16/2021 at 11:56 PM, 杰.克 said:

However it does give you a breakdown of your daily earnings in RMB as well as what videos this comes from (and views it relates to)

Ok, so I could extract this from the app/website somehow (is there a way?) and present it alongside an invoice which is stamped with the date, payment details etc and the bank statement showing receipt of the income.  That sounds promising.  What about the income from Bilibili creators who are signed exclusively to the platform and hence receive an extra income on top of the income per view, do you happen to know anything about that?

[杰.克]

On 7/19/2021 at 10:30 AM, exoticdisease said:

Ok, so I could extract this from the app/website somehow (is there a way?) and present it alongside an invoice which is stamped with the date, payment details etc and the bank statement showing receipt of the income.  That sounds promising.  What about the income from Bilibili creators who are signed exclusively to the platform and hence receive an extra income on top of the income per view, do you happen to know anything about that?

 

You could print screen a breakdown - it would have daily RMB earned. It wouldn't be stamped though, and it will just show it going into your Bili account - not into a bank account.

 

Signed exclusively? I don't think this is a particularly common thing for creators. I don't know of any creator is signed exclusively to Bili. If there are, this will be a unique, and really high profile creator, with a personal deal with them - Id guess. 

 

Edit - Also, if your friend is buying a house in China (yikes- expensive), with the monthly view revenue earned on Bili (which pays about a 1/10th the rate of youtube)  then your friend has gotta be pulling in hella monthly views.  Creator income streams come from adverts on the side and livestream hustles mostly.

[exoticdisease]

10 hours ago, 杰.克 said:

Edit - Also, if your friend is buying a house in China (yikes- expensive), with the monthly view revenue earned on Bili (which pays about a 1/10th the rate of youtube)  then your friend has gotta be pulling in hella monthly views.  Creator income streams come from adverts on the side and livestream hustles mostly.

I'm sorry but for obvious reasons, I can't provide any more details.  Thank you for the info, that's very helpful!

[杰.克]

The only obvious thing to me is that if your friend is an exclusively signed content creator on Bili, earning enough to buy a house in China, he already knows how the payments system work.  And if in a surprising turn events he doesn't, he should hire a professional, rather than ask his friend to post basic questions,  anonymously on a language learning forum, populated by non-natives ?

[Jellyfish]

So, most of the question has already been answered (payslips are for employers, invoices are for freelancers, banks give mortgages to freelancers - reluctantly, if at all - based on the past 3 years or whatever of income as shown in bank statements and tax returns, not based on invoices).

Just to add that on bilibili (and xigua etc), while you do get money into your account without any explanation as to how it's calculated, that money is then in your bilibili account. If you want to withdraw it into your bank account and actually use it, you pay tax on it (I think it's brackets, like the first 800rmb per month are free and then you pay X% in increasingly higher brackets. If you overpay by eg withdrawing a large amount once a year as opposed to 800 monthly, you can reclaim it in your tax return.)

This is true for all income from bzhan/xigua, no matter if it's normal views, exclusive creator payments, or from competitions. Afaik the exclusive creator thing is only happening on xigua right now, I never saw it on bzhan.