Patreon, Kickstarter, International Tax Laws [split]

[vivdunstan]

@DeusIrae

But who exactly are the small operations that don’t find that it makes business sense to pay for one of the many intermediary services that help with this, but nonetheless are deriving nontrivial revenue from so many different foreign jurisdictions they can’t be expected to keep up their tax compliance?

I know of quite a lot of US retailers in the fountain pen world (e.g. Goulet Pens) and also roleplaying and tabletop games (e.g. Steve Jackson Games) who stopped shipping orders to the UK and/or EU because of the tax burden and bureaucracy. This was after the new tax rules for both the UK and also the EU which expected sellers to process tax stuff under a certain value themselves on behalf of the receiving country. These are companies who take a not insignificant amount of sales. Especially Goulet Pens who sell often very high value items. But it wasn’t worth it for them. More recently Goulet Pens have switched to use a different courier which I think makes it easier for them to manage stuff. So they no longer have restrictions on sending to e.g. the UK, and I think the EU now too. But it isn’t always the smallest businesses. Sure they’re not huge. But they do sell at quite a high level. I also know digital companies in the US who will no longer sell to the UK or EU (even ebooks / digital magazines - no shipping) because of the tax bureaucracy. It’s cutting us off a lot. And absolutely not the fault of the companies we want to buy from.