[pluma]

You mean all the unnecessary paperwork for every EU member state affected by the VAT changes?

And it's of course entirely reasonable to expect your users to know that they have to do the paperwork for contributions in the 1-10 dollar range themselves without ever explicitly telling them.

I'm not even sure that level of information is available to the users. If I were being funded on Patreon, would I have to get in touch with every single patron and ask them for their VAT details? And what would I do if someone didn't answer?

This is no different from the borderline criminal behaviour Uber and AirBnB are encouraging.

[Kalium]

Not handling someone's legal obligations for them is borderline criminal?

Here in the US, that's very common. For instance, contractors are often paid in full and expected to handle their own taxes. Generally they do. This isn't considered borderline criminal.

[slowmovintarget]

Why is it reasonable to expect Patreon to manage compliance and liability for such a law? If the EU wants to destroy commerce, that should be within the province of its citizens to address... oh wait. There's the problem.

[idea15webdesign]

Because that's what EU law, and its member states, have decreed. For example, here is the guidance from HMRC in the UK.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-supplying-dig...

Per this law, the third party marketplace/gateway is responsible for compliance and liability. That is how everyone in the EU affected by the law views it, and it is why most marketplaces and platforms are slowly but surely coming into compliance.

This particular marketplace, on the other hand, hired a consultancy firm whose raison d'etre is tax avoidance http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31147276, who proceeded to give them what they paid for. That tax advice was so incredibly wrong it was almost laughable; it misrepresented the "place of supply", the fundamental piece of information behind the entire continental tax change. https://idea15.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/vatmoss-place-of-ser...

This issue is not a question of extraterritorial sovereignty or individual responsibility. It's about dodgy tax advisors giving dodgy advice to a company which paid good money for it.

[__david__]

> Because that's what EU law, and its member states, have decreed. For example, here is the guidance from HMRC in the UK.

But Patreon is not in the EU's jurisdiction and therefore isn't subject to their laws (with the exception of any treaties that the US has with the EU).

> …hired a consultancy firm whose raison d'etre is tax avoidance…

You keep saying that like it's bad. The whole point of tax accountants is make sure that a business or individual pays the minimum legal amount they have to.

[idea15webdesign]

This is where the reciprocity promised to the world by the US over FATCA (the US's extraterritorial tax law) may begin to rear its head. Every bank and financial system in the world has had to comply with US tax law with no choice. Sooner or later the world is going to want to claw back the money it has had to spend on compliance.

[jes]

With respect, are you assuming that criminal behavior is also necessarily immoral behavior?

I am glad to see services like Uber and AirBnB available.

How do you see it?