An Open Market on Economics

[Caithness]

I don't mind getting credit card tips, but they actually do all go to me at Domino's. The only advantage of a cash tip is that my federal income tax withholding is lower.

[Büge]

It's actually sort of hilarious to me that it's the buttfuck nowhere places who all have the magical digital future devices, whereas the huge happening modern cities still have many places relying on ancient physical tokens.

It's practical, really. If your business doesn't rely exclusively on physical currency, there won't need to be as much physical currency around that needs to be moved in and out of town.

[Mongrel]

Engadget: Patreon has decided to destroy itself, I guess?

They're shifting transaction fees to supporters instead of recipients, which punishes both small donations and donations to multiple creators. A huge number of creators now face the prospect of their $1-$5 pledge range being wiped out.

They're also moving from a flat fee to flat fee PLUS percentage.

[Büge]

[Mongrel]

New details emerge on the Patreon mess.

They're removing the ability to pay pledges with a Patreon balance. They're also removing the bulk processing - every pledge will be processed individually. These changes appear to be attempts to avoid being regulated as a money transmitter.

Soooooooo... pretty much everyone involved with Patreon - patrons, artists, and the company and rank-and-file employees themselves - is screwed.

It would not surprise me at all now if a company which is already fully licensed - such as PayPal or Visa - may now create a competing service which cuts out the middleman.

[Mazian]

It was news to me that, under the original terms, the transaction fees weren't included in Patreon's 5% cut. I'd always just assumed that covered their overhead and profit both. Foolish me for not anticipating maximum greed.

[Thad]

It would not surprise me at all now if a company which is already fully licensed - such as PayPal or Visa - may now create a competing service which cuts out the middleman.

Has anybody used Drip yet? Does it have the same kind of payment problems that Patreon just introduced?

It seems to me that changing your policy in this way right after the biggest crowdfunding site on the Internet announces that it's horning in on your business model is perhaps not the best business strategy.

[Mongrel]

Via the WSJ:

The possible marginal tax rate of more than 100% results from the combination of tax policies designed to provide benefits to businesses and families but then deny them to the richest people."

"As income climbs and those breaks phase out, each dollar of income faces regular tax rates and a hidden marginal rate on top of that, in the form of vanishing tax breaks. That structure, if maintained in a final law, would create some of the disincentives to working and to earning business profit that Republicans have long complained about, while opening lucrative avenues for tax avoidance. As a taxpayer’s income gets much higher and moves out of those phaseout ranges, the marginal tax rates would go down. Consider, for example, a married, self-employed New Jersey lawyer with three children and earnings of about $615,000. Getting $100 more in business income would force the lawyer to pay $105.45 in federal and state taxes, according to calculations by the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation. That is more than double the marginal tax rate that household faces today. If the New Jersey lawyer’s stay-at-home spouse wanted a job, the first $100 of the spouse’s wages would require $107.79 in taxes....."

[TA]

I am disinclined to trust a conservative-leaning "Tax Foundation" being quoted in a Murdoch rag talking about how marginal tax rates mean you're gonna pay greater than 100% taxes. 99% of the time, that means not knowing or knowingly misrepresenting how tax brackets work.

With this bill, it's not impossible that they fucked it up that badly though. But only because the non-partisan Tax Policy Center suggests that the federal marginal rates could peak as high as 85% in the right confluence of circumstances.

[Mongrel]

Yeah, my take wasn't "Taxes are too high" it was "this bill is such a colossal fuckup that there is no internal logic to it at all".

[Caithness]

A Maximum Income legislated through the tax code is a great idea, I think.

[Mongrel]

In the "Good news" column, Patreon walked back everything and apologized.

In the "Not so good news" column, well: