rustyquill
patreon
A taxing situation
🕑 Added 2020-06-22 15:44:11 +0000 UTCHi folks,
Best wishes from all of us at Rusty Towers and we hope you’re all well and safe. While we note that many countries are starting to ease the lockdown, here at Rusty Towers we are still very mindful that our operations and studio situation are such that we will continue to be operating remotely for some time yet.
Again, it’s a quiet week on the news front, I’m afraid. It’s fair to say that, like many production companies, the current global situation and shutdowns have impacted us in ways we hadn’t expected and are still adjusting to. We’re doing a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure that things like production and development work are still able to happen and as soon as I can tell you more about that, I will.
One small thing: if anyone is planning on sending something to our PO Box, please ensure that the letter/package is addressed to Rusty Quill or Rusty Quill Ltd and NOT to an individual person here. If it is for someone specific, please include that inside the post. We are having issues with the PO Box handler not accepting post for individuals and things may be returned to sender.
The big thing this week, however, is tax and how it affects your Patreon pledge. As of 1st July 2020, Patreon will be implementing sales tax on pledges for Patrons living in 36 US states and 17 other countries, including Australia, India, Norway, Canada (Quebec), Switzerland, Iceland and South Africa. If you are living in an affected country, Patreon will have already emailed you about this in June.
Now, how much pledges in affected areas will rise by is going to be variable and depends on what fraction of the pledge is taxable in those jurisdictions. Some of our Patreon bonuses will be taxable and some won’t, so we can’t say exactly what the impacts will be yet. And because this change involves the USA, the tax has to be split out as a separate line item and can’t be included in our up front pricing (not to mention that it varies from state to state as well). According to their figures, a US resident may see an increase of 20 – 55 cents on a $5 pledge (though we will see if that’s true or not in just over a week).
This means that at present, we are unable to pay/cover the additional tax on your behalf, which would be our preferred solution. However, we are not planning on making any immediate changes to our pricing/tier structure, as we wish to see how Patreon handles this change and if they make any further changes to the handling in July. That said, Callum and Tai are investigating other ways that we can mitigate some of the issues (including a pricing restructure if necessary) and ensure that you all continue to get value for your Patreon pledge to us.
If you have any comments or suggestions on this situation, please leave a comment below.
And, here's what you can expect from us this week (all shows release at 4pm UK time, unless otherwise stated):
Tue 23rd June
RQG158 – Travelling Coat* (Patreon)
Wed 24th June
MAG173 – Night Night (Patreon)
RQG158 – Travelling Coat* (Public)
RQ Streams – Anil plays… West of Loathing (5pm)
Thu 25th June
MAG173 – Night Night (Public)
Fri 26th June
Knight/Noble Bonus – TMA Fluff Winner #3 : Bargain Hunting
Sat 27th June
RQ Streams – Mike plays… The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (3pm)
Sun 28th June
RQ Streams – Tessa plays… Neversong (4pm)
* Provisional title, subject to change
Have a good week all!
Anil
Community Manager
Comments
I live in a state that will be taxed and I'm also 100% fine with the tax being on my side - Americans are used to tax being added on to our purchases at the end lol Interesting coincidence- I just had a project where I work where we had to research sales tax on digital goods for a client. Not all states consider digital goods taxable and for some states it depends in what the good is. (Documents might be taxable but not audio content, or vice versa).
HazelnuttGem
OMG I was so focused on the new MAG episode title I didn’t even notice this! Yaaay fluff (sorely needed atm too)
HazelnuttGem
Good points, both, about Manuela. Could it have anything to do with Julia? She was certainly affected by the Dark, as a child, although she’s now aligned with the Hunt...
Bergs
Oooooh boy, looking forward to more fluff!
Gilligan Mungus
Jonny’s sneaky like that
Gilligan Mungus
Good memory!!! And thank you for being considerate about spoilers. I tend to assume that all of us patrons are all caught up in Magnus and I really shouldn’t.
Nicky
From the Mag Title, I feel like Dark is the obvious choice, but I’ve been led astray by interpretation of titles before...
Nicky
**SPOILERS** My understanding of the state of things is that Distortion!Helen scooped her into the hallways at the end of that ep and that’s the last we’ve heard about it.
Gilligan Mungus
This week’s MAG title makes me wonder, wasn’t Manuela still alive after John extinguished the dark sun? Have to look that up because if not, all of the avatars for The Dark have already died. Interesting.
E C Marlowe
I'm happy to pay whatever extra is necessary to cover the tax.
Andrew Hamilton
Tax shmax. I'm happy to have whatever tax boost happens pass on to me rather than RQ. Just keep doing your collective thing, and we'll be here to support you all.
Jordan L. Hawk
*Sees the title for this week's MAG* "Well, that's not ominous AT ALL." O_O
Mary Zorn
Seconded as others have said, I'd rather RQ not take on the tax burden for us. This is news to me. I appreciate RQ giving us the heads up still as none of the other patreons i support have mentioned the tax change at all.
Niamh H
https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043055071-New-Sales-Tax-Requirements-on-Patreon#collecting this is the link listing the countries and specific states
ex libris crow
Seconding Arcturus- I *expect* to pay tax, this is not a hardship :)
NIGHT NIGHT i am excite
Is the full list of countries being taxed available anywhere perchance?
