Sales tax: are the following taxable?

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1

Hi, can someone please help me out? I’m unsure whether the following are taxable:

  • Behind the scenes content
  • Community
  • Direct one-to-one Connection
  • Other (I know this one’s amorphous by nature, but how is it assessed?)

I’d really appreciate the clarity! Thank you!

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Hey! See this article, there is a table there that can help you.

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Thank you @wild_guy :slight_smile:
@The_Character_Consultancy to help guide you through every step of the settings, here are some more resources:

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

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I already looked all the way through that one - it doesn’t even mention the different options I’m asking about but thank you anyway.

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Hi @The_Character_Consultancy! There’s no easy answer for this. What’s considered “taxable” varies depending on your patrons location. Countries, states, even counties have different rules for what is and isn’t taxed. This is why we’re asking creators to categorize their benefits in the new tax tool, so we can apply tax where necessary.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you need more clarification.

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Trina found it easy enough to say what would be taxable by most people in this article. She just doesn’t go into which of the drop-down options were ‘taxable in most states’ - emphasis on most because Trina seemed to find the information pertinent when writing that article, and rightly so: most people, myself included, have dozens of patrons.

I’m not asking about one particular location or one particular patron and whether their pledge will be taxable. I’m asking about the overall situation for the drop-down options I mentioned in the opening post of this thread. I don’t believe that that information is not available to Patreon - after all, they put the drop-down list items there so that they could assess which pledges are taxable and which are not.

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I’ll do our best to clarify these for you here. It’s a challenge because creators are all doing unique things and those don’t always fit neatly into tax categories. We definitely recommend you use the advanced sales tax settings so you can spell out exactly what you’re offering and the value of each thing.

  • Behind the scenes content
    Taxable in roughly half of US states

  • Community
    Exempt in the majority of US states

  • Direct one-to-one Connection
    Hard to say without more info from you on what this is. Sounds like this could be classified as a phone call or live chat. Those are non taxable in the vast majority of states.*

  • Other
    Other’ without any further info is not going to be taxed because we don’t know what it is. How is the* ‘other’ *described in your tiers?

I hope this is helpful!

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I’m trying to understand how to handle the following:

  • We livestream interviews through Zoom and we share the login with our patrons so they can ask their questions “in person” instead of in the YouTube chat box. Most never take advantage of this.

  • We offer discount codes from brands that we partner with. Some people love it, some never use it.