Tag: sales tax

Head’s up: Patreon to start charging sales tax.

The good-ish news? My decision to have a single tier is going to save my readers quite a bit:

If the patron is not receiving any benefits, the pledge is not taxable in most places. For example, any pledge where the patron didn’t select one of your tiers, and any amount of money added on top of the tier cost is not in most places taxable. One notable exception is the EU, where we are currently required to apply tax (VAT) to all pledges regardless of whether the patron is receiving any benefits. We are working with EU tax authorities to secure reductions and exemptions for support-based pledges in the future. 

I have a single tier for $1, and it’s pretty explicitly a ‘first-look’ tier. I have a history of eventually giving this stuff away, so even if Patreon decides that my PDFs are taxable income they still can only ding my readers to the tune of the individual US state sales tax, which works out to three to seven cents a month. And if they try otherwise, I can contest that with an absolutely clear conscience, because I’ve had only the one tier since the day I signed up. This isn’t a situation that I’m now trying to evade, in other words; it’s merely one that legitimately doesn’t fully apply to me.

But I’ll keep an eye on it nonetheless.

NH Ways & Means chair Susan Almy thinks you’re dumb.

That’s the only conclusion that I can come to after reading this eyebrow-raiser of a quote.  The context: the Democrat-controlled New Hampshire legislature is bringing in a pro-income tax group called ITEP to a summit/seminar (the rhetoric keeps changing), and state W&M chair Rep Almy is upset at all the shadowy conspiracies arrayed against said group.  Well, she assumes that there are shadowy conspiracies; since her side has them (Tides Foundation, Soros, ACORN), then so must the other.  In the process of mangling even the popular perception of the McCarthy era, Almy tosses off this whopper:

“I have even had people emailing to yell at me for supporting a sales tax, which I have never done – I simply invited a respected state economist in to talk to us about why an income tax was bad for business, and he said we should consider a sales tax instead.”

Let me change some phrases around to highlight the absurdity of that statement:

“I have even had people emailing to yell at me for supporting eating puppies, which I have never done – I simply invited a respected state economist in to talk to us about why eating kittens was bad for business, and he said we should consider eating puppies instead.”

You don’t invite in a puppy-eater to talk to you unless you’re at least receptive to the idea of eating puppies. And if you’ve truly ‘never’ supported sales taxes, it seems just a bit odd to be this upset when people point out that your actions contradict you – particularly when your own comments don’t distinguish between your own opinions, and those of ‘a respected state economist.’  I find it difficult to believe that she didn’t notice the tacit admission in her own statement; I suspect that she did, and simply assumed that none of her opponents would be bright enough to do the same*.

On the bright side: even if she is playing conspiracy theorist, at least she hasn’t dragged in the Jews somehow.  That’s something, at least.

Moe Lane

*This is a fortunately common delusion on the Other Side.

Crossposted to RedState.