Morning everyone! If you support a few people on Patreon, you've probably heard all this already, but for the benefit of those who haven't, I'll provide you a bit of information.
From June 1, Patreon is obliged by law to add sales tax to some Patron's pledges if you're from certain locations. For some of you, this won't affect you; for others, you may already be paying a form of sales tax (such as VAT in the UK), so nothing will change.
Patreon will be providing full details of the affected regions in an email to you all from June 1 onwards, but I wanted to give you all a heads-up that this is coming. If you're in one of the affected regions, this may result in a small increase to your pledge amount in line with your local sales tax rate.
Don't worry about this too much! Sales tax in the US ranges from 4% to 11%, so on a $5 pledge, this will mean about 20-55 cents in tax added at most — not much at all. Patreon estimates that less than half of all Patrons will be affected, and the amount involved will be very small. And if you live outside one of the affected regions — which Patreon will be providing further details of in their email to you on June 1 — nothing happens at all!
Not everything on Patreon is taxable, however, and thus creators have been encouraged to classify what each tier "means" in terms of value. "General support" is not taxable, for example, as nothing is actually being sold — it's effectively a donation — but things like exclusive content (these blog posts) and digital goods (monthly wallpapers) are in some circumstances. I've done my best to classify the benefits to minimise the impact to those of you in the affected areas.
Thanks in advance for your understanding. All this is a legal requirement (well, more accurately, a variety of international legal requirements) that Patreon are required to follow in line with local tax laws based on the "buyer's" location but, as I say, it shouldn't affect too many of you that much.
Have a pleasant Friday, and apologies to be the bearer of… fairly "meh" news 🙂
Discover more from I'm Not Doctor Who
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
