Is this a scam?

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James Puckett
James Puckett Posts: 2,019
in Type Business
Someone making a purchase is asking me to provide an IRS W9 form and use a weird payment system just to purchase a font. It’s a film industry company. Is this normal or is someone collecting information for a scam?

Comments

  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,031
    Could be either. But it is not implausible.

    I once had a law firm that made me sign up on their own instance of some payment system (IIRC), just to pay me for a deposition. (This would be the only payment I would get from them, as like most depositions, it was being paid for by opposing counsel.) Among other super-irritating hoops I had to jump through for that one.

    If the license $$$ is small, you could just tell them to do it your way.  :tongue:
  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 1,003
    I’ve had to sign up for corporate payment systems for large projects. And in those cases a W-9 is pretty standard. They’re needed for issuing 1099s for payments to vendors and contractors that total more than $600 in a year (set to increase to $2000 in 2026 due to recent legislation). 
    Most corporate accounting depts will just insist on a W-9 to onboard a new vendor.
    If the license your film industry customer is seeking is less than $600 and they don’t expect to license anything else from you in this calendar year, then you could try to persuade them that it’s not necessary. But you could just end up chasing away the sale.
    You have to decide whether this is a friction worth engaging in.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,443
    For large corporate clients, this isn’t unusual. They need to register suppliers as vendors in their system in order to process payments. That’s been the case for all the big US tech companies we’ve done work for.

    Be aware that sometimes additional requirements come with vendor registration. One US tech company makes us to do annual ‘Code of Conduct’ training, and tried to get us to undergo an annual data security certification that cost >$8,000. Thankfully, our project managers at the company we able to convince them that fonts are not a significant security issue, but only after I’d spent a huge amount of time and expense jumping through hoops.

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