Patreon Sales Tax Bullshit

So...I do feel the need to talk about this, even though I'm sure a lot of you already know. Don't worry... I'll be putting my a more relevant Progress Report post later today :-). 

Upcoming Sales Tax Changes

In essence, the Patreon team sort of lost the plot a while ago, when they expanded into being as much a marketplace as a place to...gain patronage. Patronage being the original model (and the one I have stuck to for various reasons), where Patrons are simply providing Support for a creator, not getting physical rewards. Strictly speaking, this is actually how my patreon still works. I do not 'sell' anything. All of my games are 100% free non-commercial works, with early access to test versions being the only reward that could be considered tangible, sort of.

That model isn't really taxable. You're effectively donating to help compensate from for the god-awful amount of time I sink into the games, not buying something from me.

Unfortunately, Patreon as a whole has really slid more towards a subscription/physical goods models in the last few years, which are things that ARE taxable under the law. And, equally unfortunately, that's caught up to everyone using the platform. Patreon is being forced by the various legal powers-that-be to apply sales tax to their Patreons. Which...is bullshit for those of us that it shouldn't really apply to.

Theoretically, literally the only rewards I offer that SHOULD be taxable under even the new rules are the short-stories and guides. The early-access to test builds shouldn't be. However...despite it being a common model, Patreon has taken leave of their brains (again) and not defined a difference between Early Access to non-commercial games and Early-Acess to paid commercial products. Meaning that my patrons are likely to get hit with at least SOME sales tax, starting July 1st.

Legally speaking, I could probably fight that. Even in the states that allow you to tax early-access, doing so on a free product wouldn't do anything ( I think?). As it stands, however, Adult Creators are all on very shaky and uncertain grounds with Patreon, at pretty much all times. We bring in so much money that they still let us stay...but they don't actually want us here since we complicate things for them with groups like Paypal. The Patreon team's reaction to any adult creator making waves tends to be to simply shut down the Patreon in question, even if it complies with every last letter of their community rules (which mine, so far as I know, does). Thus, I'm not willing to risk their ire...particularly since the effects should be minimal.

On that note, I can't actually tell you what the taxes will be. The reason for that being that:

1) I can't actually be sure which of my rewards they will consider taxable.

2) Tax code is different from state to state (and this is completely irrelevant if you're outside the United State, I think. Pretty sure VAT has been being applied for years to European Patrons?). In some states, absolutely nothing I provided is taxable. Not even the short stories and guides. In others...well, you get the picture.

Net Result of all of this bullshit? SOME of you may see a, hopefully small, uptick in patreon charges 'from' my patreon starting in July. Most of you will probably barely even notice, since tax rates for purely digital product are generally pretty small in most places. I'll be attempting to keep an eye on what they actually file my rewards as (if they let me) to make sure that they ONLY charge digital content taxes, not physical product rates. That, I will protest if they try it.

At any rate, I wanted to make sure everyone was aware of this. I know Patreon has been sending out their own notices all month, so most of you have probably been aware for a while now. As such, I apologize to all of you that had to suffer a boring post instead of an update with sexy screenshots :-). I hope that this particular bit of heavy-handed nonsense from Patreon and the legal powers-that-be, won't prevent all of you from continuing to support not just me, but other creators as well!