App Store Small Business Program | Hacker News Reader

App Store Small Business Program

developer.apple.com

33 pointsgjsman-100032 comments

Previously on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135410

Can we undo the [dupe] on this? That was the announcement, this is the official applicant page, and this page has actual important information like deadlines compared to the announcement.

But this is a different page. It has the final program features and dates. I think you should undo the dupe as well

This is a great step forward. The extra 15% will make the difference between survival or not for a lot of small/solo developers.

Valve next, please.

We've already got the Epic Games Store that takes 10%, so no need to have Valve be next.

Valve will eventually align themselves though, this is what happens in an healthy market.

I am not sure if the market is healthy, though. GOG and other alternative stores didn't take off. While Epic has their strategy of giving away some free games to attract traffic, I am not sure how well that translates to actual purchases. If a customer has a choice between buying a game at the same price between two stores, they're going to stick to the one which they already use and have a big library on. And even though Steam's community features are anemic, people do get SOME value from having friends on Steam that own the same game and so on. I think it'll be hard for Epic to crack this one.

Steam has a strong hold because developers can generate as many keys as they want for free. So if indie games sell games in Humble Bundle and the likes, they are distributing Steam keys because it costs them nothing.

This alone puts Steam on the map of many gamers interested in indie games.

Epic launched their store 2 years ago. Steam still very much dominates and Valve is stubborn.

But now Apple has weakened the case that 30% is industry standard, so hopefully they'll budge. And I think you're right that they'll eventually align.

It's unfortunate that Valve could have easily been a leader on this front. Now they'll be a late follower at best.

Epic Game Store is still invite only as far as Im aware.

Am I reading this right that there's a big cliff between making $999,999 and $1M? With that and the somewhat fuzzy notion of "associated accounts", I predict a lot of ugly rules-gaming & enforcement activity in the future.

No, you are reading it wrong. All money up to $1 million is "taxed" at 15%, and all money after $1 million is "taxed" at 30%. It's like income tax brackets in the US.

Thus, there is no advantage for trying to stay at $999,999. If you make $1.2m in sales, you get 15% taken on the $1m and 30% taken from the leftover $200k.

I think you are wrong. If you pass 1M$ in 2020, your 2021 apple tax rate would be 30%.

Key parts:

If a participating developer surpasses the 1 million USD threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year.

-> Yes. For that year, first 1M is 15% but remainder is 30%. But following year, it's 30%.

If a developer’s proceeds fall below the 1 million USD threshold in a future calendar year, they can re-qualify for the 15% commission the year after.

->So anything you make affects your future tax rate.

Yes, the Tax Rates can be in brackets because you fill them out once a year.

Any developers can fill me in but I doubt apple is either holding onto payments so they can apply their tax at the end of the year or “charging” a developer at the end of a year based on how much they make. Apple Tax is on a per transaction basis so while it might be nice if Apple changes every company 15% and then 30% after they made a certain amount that’s not what they are doing and instead you have to “prequalify”.

It works like marginal rate for the year. If you made less than 1m in 2020, your taxing is 15% on first 1m and 30% on the rest in 2021. In 2022, your tax rate would be 30% since you no longer qualify for this.if you make less than 1m$ in 2022, you start at 15% again in 2023

In that case, Apple is expecting that the odds of somebody making less money in 2022 because of the increased rate compared to 2021 to be very unlikely.

I.e. If you sold exactly $1M and were taxed at 15%, Apple takes $150K and you make $850K. Under an increased rate of 30%, that means you would lose money if you made less than approximately $1.25M in the year after, but the odds of someone with $1M in revenue failing to get to $1.25M by next year is very unlikely.

> the odds of someone with $1M in revenue failing to get to $1.25M by next year is very unlikely.

Apps tend to be faddish, especially games. There's an upswing and a downswing. Little stays popular forever.

That's still worse than having it all at 15%, so it's still worth breaking it up if possible.

Rats of hanoi, cobra effect and all.

Apple should have made this like the tax rates, first 1M at 15%, rest at 30%.

With this move, apple didn't affect their revenue, while looked good to everyone. From a prior thread [1], this affects very little of apple's revenue.

[1] Information from Sensor Tower indicating the App Store cut would apply to an estimated 98 percent of iOS app developers who generate roughly 5 percent of the store’s revenue.

"should have"? But they did, that's exactly how it works.

Not exactly.

If I make $999,999 one year, then I'll be charged 15% commission the next year.

Let's say I hit $1,000,000 in October of that next year. For the rest of the year I'll pay 30% commission.

When the next year starts, I'll pay 30% commission for all the earnings that year. If I fail to make $1,000,000 that year, I'll go back down to 15%.

This is correct, but clarifying the last sentence, you go back to 15% the year after.

See my other comment in this thread.

Associated Developer Accounts? It is hard to draw the line here. I have 2 company with different partners. It is so vague if I should add associated developer accounts or not.

Lines seem very clear to me... they are:

You have majority (over 50%) corporate, individual, or partnership interest in the ownership or shares of another Apple Developer Program account.

Another Apple Developer Program member has majority (over 50%) corporate, individual, or partnership interest in the ownership or shares of your account.

You have ultimate decision-making authority over another Apple Developer Program account.

Another Apple Developer Program member has ultimate decision-making authority over your account.

Then what do you think about these scenarios? Me and my partner has a company with 2 different apps right now.

Scenario 1: We open 2 different LLC companies with 50% 50% shares. These 2 companies don't have any majority and decision making authority in each other. Totally independent different companies with same owners. If we transfer 1 app to an LLC and other 1 app to the other LLC.

Scenario 2: I open an LLC as an 100% owner myself and my partner open an another LLC as an 100% owner himself. Totally independent different companies. If we transfer 1 app to an LLC and other 1 app to the other LLC.

Do you think these 2 companies can get benefit from the program in scenario 1 and scenario 2?

"App transfers are not allowed while participating in the program."

Hopefully this isn't a sting in the tail and they allow app transfers after leaving the program.

good move, now it's time to get rid of the $100 yearly developer fee, which is absurd.

Hard disagree.

This is needed to stop overflowing levels of trash like on android

What? The $100 fee has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the review process. Like, do you seriously believe that makers of all the shitty apps out there can't come up with $100??

Also, Google developer account used to be paid at one point. I have no idea if it still is but when I used to publish in the early days there was a fee to pay. Didn't stop the shitty apps from appearing because....that's not what the fee is for.

The Mac App Store had weird Chinese clones of Bonzai Buddy on it, but with different animals.

Have you SEEN the top 100 grossing on app store recently?

What an interesting new development, this generates tons of goodwill from smaller devs while sticking it to multimillion dollar companies that were pushing the hardest to get Apple to change their fee structure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com