jbernal

The sales tax is coming, the sales tax is coming

Added 2020-05-14 21:34:23 +0000 UTC

Because no good crisis should ever go to waste, politicians want more pounds of flesh.

Starting in July, online processors will be saddled with the joyous task of figuring out individual state sales taxes. This means that based on the location of the buyer (which means you, dear customer), you might have to pay your state sales tax on your pledges. If you are not in the USA, then this does not have any effect on you.

What effect will this have? Well, statistically only half of the US customers will see a difference. For the states that do demand their tribute, only half again consider digital content a sales-taxable thing. And then, we must determine per-creator what percentage of our rewards fall into what category. So you won't pay full tax on digital content because some of it is community access, streaming perks, etc. What an accounting nightmare this must be! Fortunately for you, Patreon is doing a decent job with this situation (while being refreshingly transparent) and letting us itemize and categorize our rewards so that we can give the greedy carpetbaggers the bare minimum that they demand, to save us both the maximum.

Since it's such a wide and varied thing, I can't even begin to give estimates on what it will cost, but it shouldn't be much, if anything. Essentially it's just another cost of compliance and some folks will get stuck with it.

Here is the list of states that will be shaking us free of our pocket change:

If you have questions, you should be able to find answers here. If you still have questions, the best place to get an answer is from Patreon’s customer support team, here.