OK fine, except for IRS Tax Form 1040. Each year's form is probably the most intentionally distributed PDF on the planet (so excluding PDFs bundled with software like this story). I don't think there is a country larger than the US that requires its citizens (or their tax agents/software) to download a form and submit it each year.
No. We're talking in the hundreds of millions of people who either make a 1040 PDF themselves or have one made for them, and every year. The number of people who have used a cryptocurrency is probably larger than but within one order of magnitude of the number of people who have filled out a US 1040. But the number of people who have intentionally downloaded the original Bitcoin whitepaper? That's a tiny, tiny fraction of cryptocurrency users.
Edit: Now that I think about it, the W-2 probably is even larger than 1040, because you get one from each employer, plus families can file jointly, and not everyone has to file taxes if they make below a certain amount. So a household with 4 people working 2 jobs each generates one 1040 but 8 W-2s per year.
Even if only half the people in China or India did that, they would be double the numbers of the US for such tasks. They have taxes, work and PDFs too.
For Google search numbers, that would be different considering PDF searches in China wouldn't be done using Google. But perhaps taxes aren't done using PDFs either, that important detail I don't know.
There are significant percentages of people in China and India that have never used the internet on any device at all, let alone opened any PDF.
The number of people filing taxes on a computer in India rounds to zero. For example, a quarter of India is illiterate. And 97+% of them don't make enough money to owe tax. And of the final 3%, many have someone else file for them.
https://www.ibtimes.com/how-many-people-india-pay-income-tax....
The linked article is 10 years old, and the situation on ground has changed a lot, specifically due to concentrated efforts by the central government to prevent tax evasion. I'm not aware of the figures, and a majority chunk of income-earners still doesn't pay income tax, but it's most definitely much less than the 97% that you mentioned.
Tax evasion as I know it, and as has been informed to me by many financial consultants I've talked to, is now increasingly difficult. You really need to have back-channel contacts with the right people and spectacular know-how of the loopholes to pull it off. I'm talking about large-scale evasion here, but much of it stands true for small-scale as well.
> Even if only half the people in China or India did that, they would be double the numbers of the US for such tasks.
Well, no, because each is more than double the US population, and only half the US population files tax forms (2021 had 165 million individual filers, on 332 million US population.)
I'm fairly certain most people outside of the US never even heard of that form at all, as most people don't work with/in US companies, nor deal with the US government at all.
W-8BEN has nothing to do about dealing with US companies or government.
If you open investment account to buy any US stock, index funds or a some other US-based financial instruments you have to fill W-8BEN. Otherwise you might be charged 30% tax on your investment income by IRS.
So even if you open brokerage account in UK, EU, India, Russia or any other country you'll surely know about this form.
