Asset store anyone?

Sorry for hijacking the thread. Ill stop.

So, your plan is to sell games in Europe/UK without paying VAT and let them just “try and come after you”?

…let me know how that goes.

Edit: oops on the hijacking.

2 Likes

1 Like

I don’t really want to get into a business argument, but taxes are paid where the transaction was accepted. If you are a USA based company and a person from Russia, England or anywhere else buys my game, the transaction was made on US soil, so therefore is bound by US tax laws only. If I have a European arm based in France, all purchased from the french company are bound by France tax laws only.

Bottom line, the taxes are accounted for based on the soil they are transacted upon, not based on the location of the person that purchases the product.

You are absolutely 100% incorrect.

1 Like

Iv been self employed over ten years. Been there. Done that. I’ll happily agree to disagree. I have no desire to go over ten years of how I came to know.

Maybe you’re mixing up import tax such as buying iPads from America and bringing them to the UK. That’s importing goods and not the same game.

Why do you think PayPal are based in Ireland? For tax purposes and tax levies. All transactions take place in Ireland. They pay something ridiculous like 4%. Microsoft pay ZERO tax in the UK and made a deal to pay a maximum of 250 million in tax per year (a tax celiing ffs) to the UK because all business is done overseas, not in the UK… Google pays virtually nothing because of the same rules. That’s how they manage to get so big. They know how to play the game.

Well, afair VAT is always to be paid by the customer and this in the customer’s land. That’s why Humble Bundle offers to handle European Tax for you.
Anyway as far as MITM’s approach goes: If you open a bank account in Germany, you have to fill a form where you tell how much money you have in the US. So that means there are tax cooperations between the EU and America.

That’s why it’s probably not a good idea to try and fuck with them (at least as soon as you make decent amount of money).
Heck, even German Streamers which only have “small” donations report them to the tax authorities since many got busted already.

Edit: Disclaimer - I am neither a lawyer nor did I have to work with taxes so far, I only have university knowledge. Also taxes may vary from country to country.

At least here in europe, you have to pay VAT depending on where your customer is from. Big mess, bit thats how it works

Monkeys are out of control anyway…

Well, it’s good that the asset store Sketchfab handles such money-and-law-stuff - we don’t need to worry (see other thread about how to make an asset store - people were kind of scared to handle such things). :slight_smile:

But I know that some small to medium game companies handle “store-stuff” by themselves and don’t use Steam etc. There was an article in the “Making Games” where a company described their custom way of writing their own bindings for PayPal, credit cards, mobile phone micropayments etc.

Con: they needed a team of experts for tech and law to gain that know how and productive system
Pro: they saved some money (Steam and other stores want a cut of what you make)
Pro: they had all the statistics and could see in which region customers preferred which pay option
Pro: they were able to make better (custom) deals with middleware solution providers

“Non-resident trading companies which do not have a branch in the UK, but have UK customers, will therefore pay tax on the profits arising from those customers in the country where the company is resident, according to the tax law in that country. The profits will not be taxed in the UK. This is not tax avoidance: it is simply the way that corporation tax works.”

We’re not talking about income tax. We’re talking about sales tax.

Even in the US, Amazon will charge you sales tax for your state. It used to not have to but states got tired of being left out.

The thing is that in the US, purely digitial goods do not have sales tax.

So, we can agree to disagree… with the knowledge that you are incorrect. I’ve researched this because when the EU (at the time included UK) started to apply VAT to digital goods, it effectively destroyed Mythruna’s whole business model. I’ve followed this for some time.

For outside-EU companies, dealing with VAT has supposedly gotten easier. For one thing there is a minimum sales figure before it goes into affect and for another (apparently) you know longer have to file with each country that you sell in and can apply with some central authority. This was like two years ago so maybe it’s changed again to be the bad old way.

Ok, Paul. I’ll continue to make international sales for another decade while you keep telling me I have no idea what I’m doing. Good day, sir.

1 Like

Yeah, you go ahead and do that… the internet is literally plastered with information on how you are doing it wrong.

In the U.S. apparently it’s more complicated than I thought. Amazon charges sales tax now and will soon for its third party sellers because many states started requiring it and I guess they got tired of fighting about it (considering they had to keep distribution centers out of the states, etc.)… and it’s more complicated because US does tax digital goods apparently.

So, in the US at least, if a company is a small player then this doesn’t apply to them necessarily (yet)… except many states have enacted “amazon laws” which apply to all sales to customers in their state.

What you are 100% wrong about is that it’s at the point of the seller and that’s absolutely not true. Sales tax is calculated at the point of purchase… since that’s where the sale happened. Whether you can get away with charging taxes or not is dependent on the laws of where you are selling. Else you are tax-delinquent.

1 Like

Your payment company - be that paypal or any other method - is the company that has taken the money and is therefore the country of which your taxes are calculated.

When you buy from the US, you pay US taxes. Just because I happen to be standing in Istanbul makes no difference. Same for every other country.

The only time that becomes false is when I want to import something physical. Then import taxes are applied. Hence a $500 (about £400) ipad will still cost me £500 in the UK even if I bought it from the USA. The import tax brings it right back up to the normal cost anyway so makes it pointless. That’s the point of import tax. To stop tax avoidance.

If I buy a game from You, I pay USA tax. You, the person (a person is a body without soul- a company) are American. So I pay tax your country requires on purchases.

2 Likes

The consumer pays their taxes in their country for their purchases. You pay taxes for your profits in your country. So you are responsible for your companies tax only. You don’t have to concern yourself with so many rules. International transactions would be impossible.

In the US and UK you don’t even pay tax on profits until you hit the cap. It’s around 10 grand in both currencies. So if you hit That, well done. Now worry about taxes. You are doing well. Get an accountant.

I really would encourage act now think later in gaming start-ups - because you can’t really lose. It’s all income because you have already invested time.

Business is not difficult. You are studying university level math. You got this. Do release a game. Don’t be put off by simple business.

Rule 1. Get the money first. Otherwise you’re worrying about something you don’t even have. It’s only 20% - not an ever growing debt. You have the money - you earned it already.

Once you get the taste of knowing you can make money on your own, and start employing people, it’s another world.

Business is fun!

2 Likes

I’m this guy! Well… I actually asked to my local tax officer. Long story short: it’s sort of ok as long as it is an “occasional job”.
Besides, there’s more than just “paying VAT”. As a business, you are supposed to “recoup VAT”. You either do both or you do none.
But that was 2015, now this information might be obsolete.

When I saw this… heated discussion going on I thought to myself “Well there’s an easy way to see how the taxes are applied here! Just try to order something from Steam that was made and released in the UK somewhere!” (I’m in Canada).

Lo and behold there’s a asterisk saying “VAT applied where applicable”. So I thought “Ah HA! So they DO apply the tax of the source of the sale.”

But then… I continued with my purchase to checkout to see what the tax would amount to… and I had… ready for this?.. $0 in tax on the purchase.

So now I’m super confused.

Anyways @nehon Aside from PayPal though you guys do accept other types of payments right?

If you check out the links I provided you can see that sales-related taxes are to be calculated on the purchaser’s end… despite posts in this thread to the contrary. So VAT will only apply if you are buying in a country that has VAT.

You’re in Canada - so the law there seems different to ours.
I purchased an eBook a couple of weeks ago, from UK, to Germany - they charged VAT (quite a lot too, 10% or so).
Beware that the UK is not totally out of the EU yet, but Germany is definitely in it.
Don’t know what that means, but maybe I just buy another eBook from the US and we can settle this? :wink: