Starting July 1, 2021, the service fee for each developer will be 15% for the first $1M (USD) of earnings you make each year when you sell digital goods or services.
However, when you read on, you realize that it's an opt-in that you need to take action on:
To officially enroll for the 15% service fee tier, you must: [list of requirements and steps]
Source: Worked at Play on developer tooling.
Create an account group to help us understand if there are any other developer accounts that you're associated with. We'll use this information to make sure that you're eligible for Google Play developer programs and services, such as the 15% service fee.
This looks like a fully arbitrary requirement that has nothing to do with the 15% fee and everything with Google collecting as much data as it can get away with.
Small business discounts are very vulnerable to abuse - when the UK introduced a tax break on the first £X of employee salaries, giant corporations like G4S shifted their employees to work for 48,000 new "small businesses", each with a handful of employees, to claim the tax break 48,000 times.
Can you point me to something that talks about this? I tried a quick Google search but wasn't able to find relevant results.
I was having a a discussion with a friend who was advocating for more small business tax breaks a couple weeks ago. My counterargument was that almost all Amazon delivery drivers are technically employees of small businesses, but I'd love to have this as a more concrete example of a large corporation abusing small business benefits.
not quite as the poster claims. G4S didn't "shift" employees, they hired new people to meet their new demand for covid related work. for these new people, they used employment agencies that were "Recruitment and Employment Confederation accredited and members of the government's Crown Commercial Service (CCS) Framework."
it appears the accreditation of these new employment companies by the government was lacking.
That view seems a bit too cynical. The requirement is a simple abuse-prevention step. When you work at the scale of Google, there are constant threat of abuse that you need to address.