Manage W-9 Tax Compliance for Participants in Advocate

W-9 Compliance is an optional feature in Advocate that helps your brand and your participants remain compliant with US tax law. It tracks which participants have submitted a W-9 form and ensures that rewards exceeding $2,000 USD in a calendar year are properly handled.

To read more about W-9 Advocate compliance visit W-9 Compliance Explained for Advocate.

This article explains how to view, update, and bulk-manage W-9 tax compliance statuses for your participants.

How to check a participant’s W-9 tax compliance status

Follow this process to check whether a W-9 form was marked as collected for a specific participant.

1. From the left navigation menu, go to [Engage] → Participants.
2. Search for and select the name of the participant.
3. On the participant’s profile, select the Payouts and Tax tab.
4. Within this tab, you’ll see:

   • The participant’s W-9 form status (Collected / Not Collected).

   

   • A breakdown of rewards earned per calendar year.

Note: If you want to see the W-9 status for multiple participants at once, you can run a program report using the report type US W-9 Tax Report.

Update an individual participant's W-9 status

Mark a W-9 form as collected

Select Mark as collected when a participant submits their W-9. Doing so removes the $2,000 USD reward limit and releases any pending rewards.

1. From the left navigation menu, select [Engage] → Participants.
2. Search for and select the name of the participant whose tax compliance status you want to modify.
3. On the participant's profile, select the Payouts and Tax tab.
4. Select Mark as collected.

1. Select Confirm.

Mark a W-9 form as not collected

By default, participants are assumed not to have provided a W-9 form. If you previously marked a W-9 form as collected and want to change the status, use this option to revert the status manually.

Note: Changing a status to Not Collected does not retroactively place rewards into pending.

1. From the left navigation menu, select [Engage] → Participants.
2. Search for and select the name of the participant whose tax compliance status you want to modify.
3. On the participant's profile, select the Payouts and Tax tab.
4. Select Mark as not collected.

1. Select Confirm.

Bulk update W-9 statuses

You can use a bulk user import to mark W-9 forms as Collected for multiple participants at once. This action:

• Exempts participants from the $2,000 USD annual reward limit for current and future tax years.
• Automatically releases any rewards that were placed in a pending state due to a missing W-9.

Warning: The bulk import option cannot be used to mark W-9s as Not Collected—that must be done individually via the participant profile.

1. Download the .csv sample file or use the following .csv data to create a sample file:

   accountId,id,firstName,lastName,email,referable,referralCode,paymentProviderId,locale,referredBy.code,referredBy.isConverted,imageUrl,customFields.province,customFields.postal
   5ac26c53ead2245a935343d2,5ac26c53ead2245a935343d3,Sara,Reyes,[e-mail],,B0DK58Z3HEF03NJ14TVB,,ar_QA,6PKBDHB79W434XG788MM,false,,QC,P1X 4N3
   5ac26c53ead2245a935343d4,5ac26c53ead2245a935343d5,Dominic,Blake,[e-mail],,E1THJUBSHVGANSC9OCEM,,,4AXZAV7FSA9S4FZKTCGT,true,,MB,S9C 4S9
   5ac26c53ead2245a935343d6,5ac26c53ead2245a935343d7,Dora,Dunn,[e-mail],,NE8ZZSJNECOLFQ76TWBX,,,7NSJJWLWNYA3SS8YPEGZ,false,,AB,B4R 4V8
   5ac26c53ead2245a935343d8,5ac26c53ead2245a935343d9,Francis,Walters,[e-mail],,KEHV3PG3P6CWQ4VBT03Y,,th,3LBNN1M0UGNN6EGONUFW,false,,SK,J0X 4A8

2. For each participant whose W-9 you’ve collected:

   • Add a column labeled: dateUSTaxFormSubitted.
   • Enter the Unix timestamp (epoch time) representing the date the W-9 was received.
   • Use an online converter to generate this from a standard date (e.g., epochconverter.com).
3. Save the file.
4. Follow the bulk import instructions to upload your file.