I accuse my cat, Quimby of a lot of things. One of them is swearing. Usually in Latin. Usually as I wake. This morning it was, “velim te futuas”. The obscenity does not worry me at all. It is more the sinister use of precise forms of grammar. Cats should not use grammar as a precise instrument. Particularly when they have breath like tuna. Cats should not say, “I should like you to fuck yourself”.

Cats should also not recommend absinthe tea.

Last night, as a result of a long running argument with my girlfriend, I became single again. Yet, again. I blame it on Jen. Jen blames it on me. I am ecstatic: this gives me time to work on making money from the internet. Which is elusive and far more difficult than I had first thought. I had told Jen that it must be possible to make money. Not the vast and implausible fortunes offered by passing electronic wide-boys. Moderate money. More than obscenely poor but less than obscenely rich.

The obscentiy of the riches and poverty suggested a bell distribution curve. At the extremes: obscene. In the centre, merely indecent. The indecency of the day was not Quimby but Mechanical Turk. Having been plodding away with Human Intelligence Tasks for a while I have, finally, worked out how much it made for me. This was the source of the argument. The price of a Kindle.

It might help to explain what Mechanical Turk is. It might help to know that Mechanical Turk allows Seeker to pay very big numbers of people very small amounts of money to carry out keyboard manual labour.  Being American, that is labor. Being American is important: my first lesson of Internet Commerce.

The UK and the US have a Tax Treaty. It says a lot of things. One thing it says is that the US Internal Revenue Service will take about one third of all non US Citizens earnings. Mechanical Turk helpfully does this. Helpful to the Internal Revenue Service but not to me. Mechanical Turk does this by witholding about one third of all earnings on their books. Being taxed by the US. The UK tax authorities will also tax the amount at roughtly a third. I might well be exaggerating for effect. You can obtqain a a foreign tax credit which means only one sided taxation.

What is true is this. If you work for a US Payer over the internet and you are likely to earn less than the region of  twenty six thousand dollars then it is not worth it. Obtaining a US tax number, to obtain a tax credit  is necessary to avoid the double taxation. For a small fee you can register your existence as a non US Citizen and obtain mountains of paperwork from the US Embassy. The US Embassy is in London. I am not.

So the first cost is the trip to London. Followed by the processing fee. The inevitable absinthe tea and overnight stay followed by the return trip. Say about eight hundred pounds sterling. Fees can be expensive. These fees will vary depending on lifestyle and travel options. The fees will not. The fees will remain the same. You might be able to get professional representation and you will need a passport. If you lack a passport, that may be another hundred pounds.

I worked out how much Mechanical Turk was paying me. For every hour worked the tax authorities got two cents each. This is how I learned about tax treaties, witholding tax and double taxation. Which is four cents of the six cents I was, on average, earning per hour. At the average exchange rate that is about six pounds and five pence below national minimum wage. If I were to employ myself to do these things I would be able to have myself prosecuted.

I had discovered the region of payments that could be regarded as obscenely poor. The region of two cents worth – per hour. You give the US Internal Revenue Service your two cents worth. You give Her Majesties Revenue Commissioners your two cents worth. You get to keep your own two cents worth. From that two cents come the costs of working for an hour. Heating, lighting, computer. The average person uses about 1.66 kW of energy per hour. Which equates to about twenty five pence per hour. Deducting that from the earnings means I have been subsidising Mechanical Turk at the rate of about twenty four pence an hour.

But I have a Kindle now. It cost me roughly twelve hundred and fifty pounds. Which is the source of disagreement between myself and Jen. Why would I pay that amount for a Kindle? She may be right.

To be honest, I did go about Mechanical Turking in the least efficient way possible. I did choose to carry out some incredibly time consuming tasks. I learned a lot. There are people saying living from Mechanical Turk. They are less likely to be UK Nationals. They are less likely to be Kindle owning Biologists from Golborne.

This morning my cat said, “I should like you to fuck yourself”. I took it to mean that I should move from the obscenely poor end of the Internet income bell curve towards the obscenely rich end of the Internet income bell curve. I took it to mean stop Mechanical Turking. So, I had a nice cup of tea.