Hey @Daniel_Scranton, thanks for reaching out. We have a recorded workshop that walks you through the sales tax settings with some really handy tips and tricks.
The beginning of the workshop we discuss the why and when details of sales tax, but you can skip to 11:30 to get to the settings walk through. Watch the workshop here. I hope this helps! Let us know if you have any questions about your settings - we’re always happy to help.
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Where is this? I do not see any option to turn tracking off at all, anywhere. I only see the option of choosing it to be a one time thing or a monthly thing. I’ve cleared my cache in hopes that perhaps my browser was just goofing but i still cannot find it on the benefits, editing benefits, etc.
I also do not see any way for us to actually delete a benefit entirely. I have old benefits from back when benefits first came out. I tried it, disliked it, and turned it all off. I -have- 2 deleted benefits but no current way to delete benefits that were previously in my list that are old or outdated. Even if i remove them from a tier, they still show up on the list when adding them for me. 
I don’t see a way to delete benefits either (which I agree is annoying), but when I click on a benefit title in the benefits manager, it gives me the option to edit or remove:
Removing it moves it to the “Benefits not tracked” category in the manager.
Hope that helps!
Yeah i just found that. rubs temples That’s extremely NOT intuitive. “remove tracking” or something would be a great clarification 
Edit 1: And apparently you can’t do anything to benefits that aren’t in a tier/have fulfillment needs. I had items that were no longer on tiers but had previously tracked items and were able to be moved into not being tracked but i have one that isn’t on a tier and never had previous fulfillment needs and i can’t do anything to it. 
Edit 2: Apparently special offers go into a hidden “deleted” category on their own without warning too. Both my special offers are hidden. I’m confused as to why deleting benefits happens with those and hasn’t been an actual option for creators to use. Benefits tracker has been around a while and not having these basic abilities is mind boggling and extremely frustrating. (I tried benefits and stopped using them because it it was basic and hasn’t been improved upon since its inception. This is exhausting and frustrating.)
Patreon’s information was basically useless. They send emails with links that just go to my page, instead of “How to manage taxes.”
Your post is the best information that you ought to be the tax advisor to Patreon, given their lack of competence in this.
So I really appreciate the time you took to complain, but give some very useful information, like the table that you linked to. That was probably the most useful thing about taxes I’ve seen.
Thanks again!
This might have already been answered, but I haven’t seen this info anywhere. Will Patrons who have already received benefits be taxed or is the tax added when they sign up?
Sales Taxes (by whatever name) are added at the time of purchase (at the register/till/checkout). Technically, they are the responsibility of the merchant to pay, even if not collected (at least in the States of which I am familiar). As I understand Patreon’s situation, they are collecting sales taxes beginning July 1. Any retroactive taxes would be between them and the various states, if the states elected to pursue it. The other option for a state would be to try to collect ‘use taxes’ (typically taxes applied to out-of-state purchases by some states) from Patrons. I seriously doubt either of those will happen.
TL;DR - Going forward only.
If a patron is required to pay sales tax, it will be charged starting from July 1st, both for new and current patrons.
Whether or not a patron pays sales tax depends on where they are located, and what you offer in your tiers. The laws and tax rates for that patron’s location will be applied whenever a patron pays money through Patreon, whether that’s monthly or per thing, if the benefits offered are taxable in the patron’s location.
Within the US, we estimate that less than half of all patrons will have sales tax added to their pledge. Outside the US, it very much depends on the country where a patron is located. For most patrons the impact will be minimal, and many patrons won’t see any sales tax added to their pledge at all.
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Hey there - great comments, thank you all, and thank you for listening Patreon.
We are just a tiny nonprofit and we aren’t taxed for our free educational podcasts. We give out little lapel pins to our highest tier only, everyone else gets our adoration and our radio broadcast early.
So these are now taxed depending on where they are sent or where we are based? Where can I determine their value? Only by percentage of the overall donation?
And does our nonprofit status have any bearing on the taxability of our tiny lapel pins? Thx!
Hi! I’m doing the sales tax things for my various tiers, and one hour in I’ve already created 4 entirely new swear words! My basic problem is that I cannot get the ‘save tier’ button to glow that beautiful blue. I added benefits, I added a picture, I chose which benefits get which percentage, I cast a magic circle and chanted my new swear words, I created servers in Discord - everything I could find to manipulate! - and still the ‘save tier’ button is sad and grayed out. Halp!
Oh no! So sorry you’ve run into this issue @Angus_McMahan! I think your tier titles are too long. Would you mind trying to shorten then then save? Let me know if this still does not work. Thanks!
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Thanks for reaching out to ask, @Katie_Stone! Sales tax is applied based on the location of your patrons. As a nonprofit, you can set your tiers to 100% general support, and set the value of your lapel pins to 0% like @AriaGlazki mentioned.
I hope this helps! Please let me know I missed the mark on your questions.
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Well that worked! Seems like a random thing to hold everything up, but I can roll with it. Thanks for the quick reply!
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Thank you everyone!
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Just got an email saying I didn’t set up my tiers, even though I finished it like day 1 they sent out new tax information.
Also, why not create an option to let us take the taxes out of the final payment we receive? So if I tell somebody they’re giving me $10, they’re giving me $10 and I’ll worry about the $0.80. I know that isn’t for everybody, but it would make tier creation for me infinitely better. I can imagine there are others who feel the same.
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I am beyond confused and frustrated here. I thought I did the right thing but still getting emails. If this is going to give me such a hard time ill just leave
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Same here, got an email telling me I hadn’t set up my Patreon for the change, even though I have and tripled-checked it.
Either they are being sent in error, or there’s something about the system that’s not working properly, leaving some users unaware that a feature isn’t properly set. If it’s the latter, Patreon better make good on any lost money.
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As per a reply from staff in the creator discord, it was meant to be a reminder email.
Looks like they just worded it terribly. But if you’ve already done what you needed, then you are fine. They just failed to put a note in there about that or make the title less “oh holy crap” inducing.
You all should be fine if you’ve updated all your tiers.
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Hey folks, @Kevin_Glusing, @Joey_Contino, @Queex, @Temrin 
We’re terribly sorry for the confusion regarding the sales tax email! If you received this email, it is because you have not finished updating the “Adjust benefit value” feature. To finish this:
- Click on Edit Tier on each one of your tiers
- Scroll down to the Advanced settings and click the arrow to open
- Check the box that says “Adjust benefit value for sales tax”
- Then follow the instructions
This step needs to be completed on all of your tiers, published and unpublished.
A small percentage of you may have completed the settings over the weekend. If so, you’ll see a pop up message when you login to Patreon.com telling you that you have completed the process and can disregard the email. So sorry again for the confusion! Let us know if you have any other questions - we’re always happy to help.