@ipv6 Please understand that tax is quite complicated (especially international taxes).
The tax forms (fw8ben) is required for them to release your prize to you, and this form has very little to do with your national tax. Understanding this may clear up many questions you’ve raised. That said, you will need to consult with a tax practitioner from your country to understand whether tax needs to be paid on the prize or not. As an example, here in South Africa, if we are granted a prize that is in relation to our field of work, SARS (the equivalent of IRS in South Africa) expect us to declare the value of the prize as part of our income tax. So if you work in the field of machine learning research, it is likely that you have to declare this within South Africa. On the other hand, if you generally don’t do this kind of work, it would not be considered income tax. (I am guessing the reasons for this is to tax sportsmen where their income usually consists of competition money. It’s quite unfortunate.)
1 + 2 have been answered above.
3.) Will have to await a competition official’s response ( @arthurj )
4.) I’m also keen to know about this, our identity documents are never tightly coupled to our domicilium
4.b) The email is directed at your team leader only
5.) I’ve submitted my documents on Friday - perhaps too late for a response before the weekend. And I’ve not yet received any response yet today. I’d say this warrants more time to be granted under reasonable circumstances.
Again, I’m not an official, just a competitor looking for fair competition procedures to be followed.