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The location of the developer should be irrelevant and have no bearing on where the app stores collect taxes. The developer is not a party to the transactions b
by dangrossman 13y ago
The location of the developer should be irrelevant and have no bearing on where the app stores collect taxes. The developer is not a party to the transactions between Apple/Google and the device owners buying apps. Apple/Google do collect and remit sales tax from customers in states they have nexus in that have a tax on digital goods (almost half of them).
- fidotron 13y agoNot quite, or it might have changed, but when the Play Store started there was a good deal of confusion about who the merchant of sale was. This is one of the excuses they used to have for why developers got such a frightening amount of information about anyone buying stuff from them.
- dangrossman 13y agoI can't imagine how they get away with that if so. The answer to all the relevant questions (where do people go to buy apps? who do they give their credit card to? what merchant actually charges their card? who handles refunds? who holds the copy of the product before it's transferred to the buyer? who delivers the product?) is all Google/Apple, not the developer. This is as if a B&M store like Staples decided Intuit was responsible for tallying its own sales tax whenever the store sold a copy of Quickbooks.
- fidotron 13y agoiirc, and my memory is hazy, it was to do with them reusing Google Checkout. The result was a mismatch between what would make sense were you running an online store of physical items and what you want to run a store of digital goods.
- rbritton 13y agoI don't have a source, but I remember reading that Apple's App Store revenue is classified as a commission to developers. As part of their 30% cut they have to deal with all of the sales tax.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]