OK, so here's the final exciting chapter, dear reader...
At this point, I could see that if I didn't do something about it, my account would get shut down, so I phoned PayPal again and waited on hold for 30 minutes, before I had to go and run an actual business rather than waste any more of my day having my day wasted on hold.
A few days later, when I had more time to fritter away, I called again and was pleasantly surprised to have my call answered after just over 40 minutes this time.
I explained the situation, and to her credit, this time this rep actually knew what the issue was - apparently PayPal were waiting for me to complete and submit to them (via a secret email address that she told me) a W-8BEN-E form!
Now, just in case I haven't been sufficiently clear up to this point, let me just say now that nowhere either in my PayPal account, or in any of the multitude of emails that I'd received complaining about my tardiness in completing my business details, did it say anything even remotely like "Oh. How 'bout that ol' W-8BEN-E then, eh mate?" Nowhere. Apparently I was just supposed to have intuited it, perhaps by sheer guesswork, or by ESP - whichever seems more likely.
Neither were particularly likely... since up to this point in my life, I'd never even heard of this rare and magical beast that goes by the enigmatic name of W-8BEN-E.
Anyhoo, the form comes from the IRS website and it's only 8 pages full of legalese gobbledygook, so as you'd imagine, completing it was a breeze.
After googling for the instructions, I found a couple of guides online presented by very helpful souls who'd had to wade their way through this legal minefield before. I had to laugh at the description in one of these guides:
"This form is eight long pages of IRSese with such easy to understand terms as “Nonparticipating FFI (including a limited FFI or an FFI related to a Reporting IGA FFI other than a registered deemed-compliant FFI or participating FFI)”. If anyone knows what this means please post, because nobody at the IRS seems to know – at least nobody who answers the phones. When faced with completing this form for the first time it is near impossible to know what you need to fill in and the IRS instructions are as clear as mud. Edit (2016): The IRS updated their form in 2016 so I have updated the instructions. Amazingly they have made the form even more complicated – there really is no form too complicated that the IRS can’t make it worse."
So finally, after completing this secret document (that's so classified that PayPal cannot even write to you about it, nor notify you when you login to your account - indeed, so top secret that not even all of their telephone support reps know about it!) and sending it off to the equally secret email address that I cannot reveal here for fear of a PayPal death squad coming after me (because PayPal's regular service@ address isn't monitored) - after a couple of days I received a congratulatory email informing me that my account is no longer restricted - WOOHOO!!
OK, slight exaggeration about the tone of the email - it was actually very plain and succinct - but I sure felt like I deserved congratulations after all PayPal's put me through these last 2 weeks!
Now, after all that - what's the bet no-one will want to pay me using PayPal anyway?
