Even on digital goods now. (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14433-VAT-Change-Announcement)
I'll be blunt, not interested in backing, and being charged VAT for it; especially if the USD backing price won't be equal to EUR in value.
Well a VPN and PayPal account should get around that problem if US$ pricing is the main objective.
I would hope that the UK to US exchange rate over a reasonable period with a fair average exchange rate will be used to make the value to the goods comparable and we have it corrected for VAT so that what you pay in UK with VAT equals mostly what you pay in the US with state tax.
If they charge internationals in real terms more than US folks then WOW, backlash time!
Aye. Its things like this that are going to force people to start genuinely looking at something online thats equivalent to a Swiss bank account for internet purchases.
Quote from: albert;393996Well a VPN and PayPal account should get around that problem if US$ pricing is the main objective.
I would hope that the UK to US exchange rate over a reasonable period with a fair average exchange rate will be used to make the value to the goods comparable and we have it corrected for VAT so that what you pay in UK with VAT equals mostly what you pay in the US with state tax.
If they charge internationals in real terms more than US folks then WOW, backlash time!
PayPal can be funny with VPNs, they have blocked my account twice in the past due to it being used over VPN (for security reasons of course). Easy enough to fix but requires fairly lengthy phone calls which is a bit of a pain...
Quote from: albert;393996Well a VPN and PayPal account should get around that problem if US$ pricing is the main objective.
Haven't there been a reasonable number of Paypal accounts suspended/terminated due to VPN use?
Interesting reading, perhaps they have been mis-banned?
QuoteThe linked Archived PayPal Community post you show seems inaccurate. The Adminstrator's reply links only to the broad page showing PayPal Legal Agreements (https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/legalhub-full?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US) and does not specify where in any of the listed documents proxy use is against PayPal's terms.
I thoroughly read through PayPal's entire User Agreement, Privacy Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, Electronic Communications Delivery Policy, Infringement Report Policy, Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Statementand Policy Updates. Only one mention of "proxies" or "proxy" was in any of these documents.
The reference is in the User Agreement (version from Feb 25th, 2014). This is from Section 9: Restricted Activities, sub-section 9.1, item (q):
Section 9.1 Title:
"9.1 Restricted Activities. In connection with your use of our website, your Account, the PayPal Services, or in the course of your interactions with PayPal, other Users, or third parties, you will not:"
"q. Take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure; facilitate any viruses, Trojan horses, worms or other computer programming routines that may damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or Information; use an anonymizing proxy; use any robot, spider, other automatic device, or manual process to monitor or copy our website without our prior written permission; or use any device, software or routine to bypass our robot exclusion headers, or interfere or attempt to interfere with our website or the PayPal Services;"
This only bans anonymyzing proxies, not all proxies. Further more, VPNs are not proxies - the technology is completely different. Even if this statement banned all uses of proxies (which it does not) it would not imply any ban on VPNs within PayPal's User Agreement.
So, it would not appear that use of VPNs or non-anonymizing proxies for accessing PayPal for legitimate purposes is in any way against the terms and conditions. Perhaps the legal agreements have changed since the Administrator's post in 2011?
Howver, I suspect that the VPNs and/or proxies might be triggering fraud monitoring/fraud detection tools. That might be where the additional security issues come in?
https://uwnthesis.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/paypal-terminated-my-account-because-use-of-a-vpn-is-against-their-terms-and-conditions/
...anyway, the good news buriewd in that post was this:
Quote from: RSIWe are informing you today, with two weeks before the switch on Feb 1, in case you have been waiting to purchase a ship or package at the current rates. By popular request, we will make a selection of limited edition and wave two ships available again during the week of January 26, in case there’s a past favorite you missed out on and would like to pick up before the international publishing switches over to RSI. Please check this space on the 26th for a list of available ships.
Well, everyone who wanted one probably has one of those ships already.
Then we get shafted on everything else from February, and we're donating. I don't plan to spend another dime, unless they arrange their EU prices to reflect the additional tax imposed when compared to US donations.
Not sure I agree with that. The tax is EU, not US and other US states have their own laws to pay tax as mentioned in the article. If you want to buy more then do, just buy the equivalent VAT amount less from an EU shop to smooth over your conscience! :p
In the end the price the consumer pays is what counts. New pledgers from Europe will look and see the difference, try to buy through the US store, fail probably if CIG do this right and not buy.
I suspect this is being forced upon CIG as the Europeans want their share or tax earnings for their population. I completely understand the situation as I deal with it every day.
It comes down to the pledge vs the product argument again and what the value of digital goods are.
People already pay this, already. Its a shame that we've not had to do it, however, the only things in life are certain, its death and taxes.
A positive to take from this is that CR will try and force the next concept out to be the most (suspected) popular amongst the remaining ships. He'll do the sale as a last hazzar and then, I think he knows, that will virtually wrap up expensive ships being on sale. :2cents:
Well I folded and brought my 2nd ship. Must now say 100 Hail Chris Roberts!!!!
Elite has you hooked on lugging boxes around the 'verse I see :thumb:
Don't at least this thing I brought has the illusion of being able to turn.
Sent from my Nexus 5
Quick update in case anyone missed it. The sale has been extended to include the Reclaimer and the Carrack.
All 24 month insurance, well worth it. Herald as well.
So there is *updates ship page*
Ha ha! Finally switched my hornet tracker for the scout as I think it'll make a better recon ship for the Idris. It hurt though, as it's now the only ship I own without LTI :(
Quote from: Galatoni;394016A positive to take from this is that CR will try and force the next concept out to be the most (suspected) popular amongst the remaining ships. He'll do the sale as a last hazzar and then, I think he knows, that will virtually wrap up expensive ships being on sale. :2cents:
I'm thinking this would be a good move. I'm sure there will continue to be a revenue stream for SC moving forward but I do believe there needs to be the beginning of a shift of emphasis towards the things that we can do 'in game' and maybe only do in game i.e we can't buy them in the store. As the planet-side, first person and persistent universe start to appear it's important that players get into the mind set of what they're going to do in game, what their avatar will look like (I'm well into planning Selina Smiloslinky, the 19 year old ex bikini model now bounty hunter..... well as Sheepy said so eloquently
"If I'm going to have to stare at my character ass for hours on end it might as well be easy on the eye"), where they are going to put in the work and what sort of return/reward they want to see from that effort.
For example if you're going to trade then it would be good to begin to see how the process will work, what the business opportunities are, how you'll make credits in game and what your upgrade or improvement path might be. I'd like to see players starting to talk more about how they plan on building their haulage empire and obtaining a fleet of branded Merchantmen in game, for example. I think ships should still be for sale but it would be good to see some 'assets' that can only be acquired in game for game currency. This will change the emphasis from buying stuff to support the game development over to planning for the game proper.
You speak sense. I must admit though, and i believe i've mentioned this before. I'm concerned that the revenue stream will dry up once this (inevitable) phase of the game comes in. I'm thinking how a game like this could maintain this incredible level of development of a (lets face it) AAA+ title and still be viable.
It's happened:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3014[/ATTACH]
and EU:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3015[/ATTACH]
43.56 Euro equals
49.16 US Dollar
So a $5.40 or 11% more expensive suggesting that US tax on digital goods is 10%.
In the case an Aurora LN package. â,¬36 up to â,¬43.56 of course 21%.
I'm a bit confused because when I bought that package would US based pledgers get their local tax added to the $45 price based on their billing address OR were RSI simply not apply tax to any transactions?
I think it's usually up to individuals to work out and pay their tax much like self assessed people in the UK. I thjnk.
As far as I know in the US each state sets it's own sales tax and adds it at the end of the buying process, as it's not always obvious which state a purchase will apply to. Also each state decides what sort of goods their specific sales tax is added to and what rate different types of goods are taxed at. So it's a bit of a minefield.
Obviously in the UK and the EU the VAT is a fixed price which by law has to be shown on marked prices right at the beginning of the sales process for retail sales. So RSI can't advertise a product at £100 and then add the VAT (20%) as the purchaser makes the transaction. It has to be shown on the ticket price (on-line store) as £120. Therefore UK prices (and I think EU price as well) will include a sales tax (VAT) up front and US retail prices won't. I think there is a law waiting to be passed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketplace_Fairness_Act) that would require US companies to charge sales tax for on-line purchases based on where the purchaser lived (or their credit card billing address was). So at the moment I don't believe RSI collects any sales tax on purchases made on-line. I wonder what people in the US will do if the law does come in. Maybe drive over a state border to buy an Amazon Gift card where the sales tax is less than their own state. Would that be legal or tax avoidance....? :eyebrow:
Quote from: Galatoni;394600I think it's usually up to individuals to work out and pay their tax much like self assessed people in the UK. I thjnk.
That's on income tax, like much of Europe, you have to do an assessment and verify you're paying what you owe.
US sales tax as Smilo says goes on in the payment part of a transaction and is state dependent. In California it's 8.4%!
What I'm getting at is I never had an address or country linked to my RSI account when I first pledged, so they never knew where I lived and no tax was added in the basket. So did RSI simply not charge anyone tax? Technically they should have verifies my location by linking it to the registered card account or PayPal verified address. None of that happened that I could see. Could it be RSI's website were dodging tax and now they've been told to pay up?
Afaiaa it is an EU rule change which enforces the changes, although many non-EU business are simply ignoring it and continuing to sell to EU customers without accounting to the relevant EU jurisdiction for any VAT. The changes came into force on 1st January 2015, so I think RSI chose to give us a little time to absorb the changes before enforcing the new rules, simply because it is highly unlikely that the loss of 30 days VAT from a now compliant business (RSI) is worth more than chasing down a non-compliant business.
As far as your comments Albert, a compliant business should be obtaining two forms of geographical ID from you when purchase in order to determine the correct VAT to apply. Usually this is your billing address for the credit card and an IP. In practice, I have no idea how they actually comply!
So, do we all go out and use our USA visa card now for purchases from RSI? :P
Well RSI's website does a grand job of challenging us on our GeoIP address and or registered address to force the right EU VAT to be applied to the purchase. Darn Dutch have a 21% VAT rate! $75 becomes $91.
So we havd vat to pay now and we pay in our own local currency right? I'm a subscriber and I'm seeing the cost fluctuate every month..is this right?
They might be using USD to EUR currency exchange rates?
I thought prices are fixed when there there's a local shop in region? I know product prices fluctuate but digital subscriptions.
The "shop" is in the US right?
So, if they do currency conversion, you're bound to get different pricing?
Well if they are contributing to European tax then their company must have subsidiaries in Europe. UK in this case and that means they can sell in local currencies and tax in these countries and there is no real justification for prices fluctuating due to the exchange rate. This is only a few pence but if ships fluctuate like subs then us Euro buyers are in for a big shock!
Cloud Imperium is a US company shipping a digital product to the EU. They don't have a shop or a subsidiary in the UK, although they do have a studio in Manchester that is developing the single player part of Star Citizen. So they price their digital goods in US dollars, convert to Euro's and then due to the new EU Law have to add the sales tax (VAT) which is levied in the EU country where the purchaser lives.
https://www.gov.uk/importing-goods-from-outside-the-eu
Oddly in the US as law is going through saying that no digital sales should attract US State sales tax which is completely opposite to the EU stand.