Does the 15% have a shelf? Like... if a business makes $1,000,001, do they owe 30% on the entire amount, or just the extra dollar? In other words, is there a disincentive to go above a million until you're above two million?
a) If you currently make under 1$ million your rate will now be 15%
b) If you to over 1 million you will be charged progressively, so each additional dollar you now only get 70%
c) If you go over, the next year your starting rate will be 30% for every dollar
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program...
If an App is found through external marketing they take a minimal fee. But if it's discovered through the store they take the full commission.
So you can make 1MM and keep 850k or make 1.001MM and keep 660.001k?
I suppose it's a first class problem to have but it's odd why Apple would make (a small number of companies admittedly) have it all.
I suspect it's a policy that will change after Tim Cook reads the viral blog post in 2022
Only the marginal fee goes to 30% -- there is no retroactive application to the first $1MM of income. The new rate applies to future income only.
And unfortunately, triggering the rate increase is sticky. If you go over $1MM is 2021, the 30% rate will apply to all of your income in 2022. (If you are under $1MM in 2022, the rate will reset to 15% for 2023).
This is the actual confusing part. Surely Apple could just apply the 15% rate to the first $1MM of every developer's income in each year instead. It's simpler, and it doesn't create the weird incentive to depress earnings at the end of the calendar year if they are approaching $1MM.
> If a participating developer surpasses the 1 million USD threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year.
If you make $999K from January to June, your July revenues will be charged at 30%. That's pretty close to a progressive fee structure, but not quite exactly progressive.
In no case will they claw back $150K from the money they already paid out.
Worrying about coming close to $1mm/annual sales is something precisely zero of them were worried about.
The answer to your question is, according to what I've read, yes - at $999,999 you owe $150K. At $1,000,001, you owe $300K. But - if you can get to $1mm, it's highly likely that $1.5mm, $2.0mm+, etc... are coming soon enough.
Many developers are focussing on $50k, $60k, type scenarios, where the 30% to 15% means enough money in their pocket to afford new development hardware, etc...
So if next year your sales fall slightly below $1m, you end up paying $150k in extra Apple tax. Then the following year you go back to the 15% rate.