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I know that it is next to impossible for Google to verify if a blogger is in the U.S. or not. Thanks for the clarification.

Adsense states that if you claim that your blog is ‘foreign’ then it should be written and maintained from that country.

Curious as to where exactly it says this?

This is the declaration in Google Adsense:

Publisher represents and warrants that it does not have any employees or equipment located in the United States (“U.S. Activities”) that are involved in any way with the revenue that has been or will be earned by Publisher pursuant to the Google AdSense Online Program. U.S. Activities include, but are not limited to, owning a web server or owning a hosting service in the U.S., or having employees in the U.S. who are involved in either:

1. setting up Publisher’s web server, hosting service, or website
2. developing content for Publisher’s website
3. marketing to create a user base for Publisher’s site
4. telephone support for Publisher’s site
5. buying products for Publisher’s site
6. maintaining Publisher’s site

Note the word ‘employee’. That is the person developing content cannot be in turn paid by the person in the non-US country. That is all. I hope you understand the technical infeasibility of google finding out from where you are posting from (unless you use blogger).In any case, the policy is pretty clear ; I fail to see where the “written and maintained” part comes from.

Karthik, I guess I may have mistakenly mentioned ‘one’ employer but basically you can get money from only those employers that sponsor your visa so for Adsense to be a valid or legal avenue of earning for those on H1-B visa, Google has to sponsor your visa. And we know that’s not happening.

Gawker, that’s a good plan. Now only if everyone of us were as patient :)

So basically, if you are on a H1-B visa, you are authorized to work for only one employer i.e. the one who sponsors your visa. You cannot be self-employed and earn additional income and doing so will render you out-of-status.

This is not true. You can hold multiple H1-B visas at the same time and the USCIS does not care about how much time you work at which place as long as you are employed full time by at least one place.

Do not ask me for links, this was the gist of a discussion I had with an Immigration attorney.

I am not sure on how this applies to making money using ad-sense, but I just did not want you to misguide your readers.

Else even though the money comes to India, logically speaking I’m not in India. So I don’t pay IT.

I’m in a fix as what to do. Any comments and suggestions?

Straight off the bat, I selected India, and therefore did not need to put in an SSN.

If you can still do this with an existing account, go ahead and do so, otherwise open a new account with a new ID and get money by paypal.

That way since your country is “india” there is no tax reporting.

Santosh, It can be done but I’m not sure if it would legal. But it could be a problem for the resident/GC holder coz he/she would be expected to file tax returns on that income if it exceeds $600.

But mind you, some advertising programs explicitly state that your website or blog should then be operated from that country.

Curious? Which advt programs are these? And what is meant by operating a blog from a certain country? Google Adsense is clear in that it says that a foreign blog can be hosted on rented webserver space in the US and still be counted as “foreign” as long as no equipment is being “owned” in US or no salaries being paid. The concept of “operating a blog” from a country is extremely vague…do you not think that?