"United States (U.S.) Activities involve having employees or owning equipment in the U.S. that are involved in any way with revenue earned through the AdSense program. This includes, but is 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 a web server, hosting service, or website 2. developing content for your website 3. marketing to create a user base for your site 4. telephone support for your site 5. buying products for your site 6. maintaining your site Generally, utilizing an unrelated third-party U.S. web hosting service to host your web pages, renting web servers that are located in the U.S. from an unrelated third party, or having your payment sent to a U.S. Post Office Box or mail forwarding address, do not of themselves constitute U.S. Activities. If you do not have U.S. Activities, please visit the Tax Information page under your My Account tab where you will agree to a statement to that effect. No tax forms are required in this instance." I did set up a hosting account in the US, but i don't have any employees in the US who work on my websites. I'm the only one that manages my websites. Its so hard to understand. Also when i completed the tax information i clicked on no for this : "Do you own equipment in the U.S. related to your participation in AdSense? This includes owning a hosting service or web server in the U.S. If you simply use or rent from a U.S. hosting company, you can choose "No" to this question." Well i clicked no to all 3 since I'm in Australia. I pay a monthly fee for my websites to be hosted in the USA. What do you guys think.
If you are just paying monthly rental to someone else's hosting service, then, as they say, you can say "No" and safely avoid the tax issue.