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Interesting. As I came into the industry in the late 90s I'm still very warely on Embrace Extend Extinguish from Microsoft. Tax, especially international tax,

Interesting. As I came into the industry in the late 90s I'm still very warely on Embrace Extend Extinguish from Microsoft. Tax, especially international tax, is hard, especially when Microsoft hide who your customers are. Why are Microsoft so bad at implementing it?

yxhuvud 6y ago
They are not. The twitter commenter is confused as to the difference between selling things and sponsoring things. Github sponsorships is intended for sponsorships, but the tweeter wanted to use it as a platform for selling stuff.
- Cu3PO42 6y ago
  I have to disagree. The different tiers clearly incentivize giving back something. Sometimes this may only be a featured mention on their website or README, but depending on the exact modalities of that placement and your jurisdiction even that may be subject to VAT.
  - dustinmoris 6y ago
    It 100% is. A mention is nothing less of an advertisement. Giving someone a mention somewhere in return for a sponsorship is simply selling an online ad. Otherwise every company in the world could legally evade tax by calling their sales "sponsorships" and offered services as a "favour".
    - Cu3PO42 6y ago
      In Germany there are certain classes of sponsorships where VAT does not apply. For example if I just put your logo in the corner of my website or a billboard I'm paying for and do not draw special attention to it or otherwise mention it, VAT would not apply. Now if I turn your logo into a link, things might be different. But analyzing when VAT applies and when it doesn't for every possible sponsorship reward and every country that Sponsors works in is a ridiculous overhead to put on either GH or the developer being sponsored, so they should just give you two options in my opinion: give back absolutely nothing, do not even list their name on the sponsors page OR charge VAT and allow the developer to provide whatever services they want.
      - iso1210 6y ago
        > But analyzing when VAT applies and when it doesn't for every possible sponsorship reward and every country that Sponsors works in is a ridiculous overhead to put on either GH or the developer being sponsored Microsoft have a large legal team that operates in practically every country in the world, I'm sure it wouldn't be a ridiculous overhead to do this
        Cu3PO42 6y ago
        If you could select the kind of reward you're offering from a GH-provided list that could work, but at that point you're putting the burden on the developer to correctly judge the reward they're offering. If GH/MSFT were to manually check every reward by every developer that might still be doable, but I do think that's a lot of effort to check in a hundred or more different jurisdictions for free. I certainly wouldn't expect it. Also, who's accepting liability for wrong categorization? Say, my sponsors in Belgium should have been charged VAT for the $20 tier but weren't. Since I'm in the EU and so is Belgium I believe it would have been my responsibility to pay the VAT, but GH decided VAT didn't apply. I doubt GH would be willing to put themselves on the hook for errors their law department made for a free service. And if I'm on the hook I'm just going to want to always charge VAT so I'm on the safe side.

yxhuvud 6y ago

They are not. The twitter commenter is confused as to the difference between selling things and sponsoring things. Github sponsorships is intended for sponsorships, but the tweeter wanted to use it as a platform for selling stuff.

Cu3PO42 6y ago
I have to disagree. The different tiers clearly incentivize giving back something. Sometimes this may only be a featured mention on their website or README, but depending on the exact modalities of that placement and your jurisdiction even that may be subject to VAT.
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  It 100% is. A mention is nothing less of an advertisement. Giving someone a mention somewhere in return for a sponsorship is simply selling an online ad. Otherwise every company in the world could legally evade tax by calling their sales "sponsorships" and offered services as a "favour".
  - Cu3PO42 6y ago
    In Germany there are certain classes of sponsorships where VAT does not apply. For example if I just put your logo in the corner of my website or a billboard I'm paying for and do not draw special attention to it or otherwise mention it, VAT would not apply. Now if I turn your logo into a link, things might be different. But analyzing when VAT applies and when it doesn't for every possible sponsorship reward and every country that Sponsors works in is a ridiculous overhead to put on either GH or the developer being sponsored, so they should just give you two options in my opinion: give back absolutely nothing, do not even list their name on the sponsors page OR charge VAT and allow the developer to provide whatever services they want.
    - iso1210 6y ago
      > But analyzing when VAT applies and when it doesn't for every possible sponsorship reward and every country that Sponsors works in is a ridiculous overhead to put on either GH or the developer being sponsored Microsoft have a large legal team that operates in practically every country in the world, I'm sure it wouldn't be a ridiculous overhead to do this
      - Cu3PO42 6y ago
        If you could select the kind of reward you're offering from a GH-provided list that could work, but at that point you're putting the burden on the developer to correctly judge the reward they're offering. If GH/MSFT were to manually check every reward by every developer that might still be doable, but I do think that's a lot of effort to check in a hundred or more different jurisdictions for free. I certainly wouldn't expect it. Also, who's accepting liability for wrong categorization? Say, my sponsors in Belgium should have been charged VAT for the $20 tier but weren't. Since I'm in the EU and so is Belgium I believe it would have been my responsibility to pay the VAT, but GH decided VAT didn't apply. I doubt GH would be willing to put themselves on the hook for errors their law department made for a free service. And if I'm on the hook I'm just going to want to always charge VAT so I'm on the safe side.