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Comment by nikic | Hacker News Reader

> You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever.

There is no anonymity between the creator and Patreon, or between Patreon and patrons. The anonymity is between the creator and the patrons.

I don't see any reason why this would be illegal, especially as Patreon does this in countless jurisdictions.

> "by works" payment model is illegal. You can receive donations or have subscriptions or pay per view but you cannot "maybe deliver", "deliver maybe one work, maybe ten". Again, illegal as fuck.

This is a model that Patreon already supports (again in countless jurisdictions), so unless their legal counsel is completely incompetent it can hardly be "illegal as fuck".

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> There is no anonymity between the creator and Patreon, or between Patreon and patrons. The anonymity is between the creator and the patrons.

that is exactly the problem. You have two relationships here: author -> patreon and author -> patrons. The first one is irrelevant, the second on is the problematic one. You cannot be anonymous in one case and not in another. That is not how business, law or taxes work - anywhere. Just because patrons do not want to know the legal identity does not mean it is legal to hide it. You could get sued for tax avoidance like that.

Do you think it was equally illegal for publishers and bookstores to sell novels written by Richard Bachman, without revealing that that was actually a pseudonym for Stephen King?

"publishers" is the keyword here. You have answered your own question.

If you can point me to a law that says it's legal to hide a content creator's identity from customers when the content is ink and paper, but illegal when it's distributed over the internet, I'd love to see it.

As others have pointed out, Patreon does exactly this in many different jurisdictions. I find it hard to believe that they're just brazenly violating the law and absolutely nobody cares.

Patreon is effectively the publisher here? Again, they are already doing it which makes your assertion of illegality questionable. What jurisdiction are you, Germany?

Anonymous artists have made money for years in all sorts of jurisdictions, it’s definitely possible to do. e.g. banksy, the residents, the rubber bandits, TISM

Yes, but these are true artists that make one-off sales. It is not a business for them(not legally). Where you have no legal obligation to become a "business". Author on Patreon on the other hand cannot claim to be "opportunistic" seller. They make repeated sales there, therefore it is taxable income and therefore they must become a legal entity of some sort and abide by the legal and tax laws of the consumer tax law in their country of origin.

With two decades of performance and album sales, an 18 year hiatus and a recent reunion you can hardly accuse TISM of "one-off" sales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TISM

The key here is that neither Humphrey B. Flaubert nor Eugene de la Hot Croix Bun were filing tax returns via their nom de guerre's.

Just absolutely loving that TISM is popping up here. They’re the first thing I thought of in this thread too.

TISM made me the Amway sales rep that I am today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxoODPQ4CTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijx_tT5lCDY

Perhaps it would be clearer to "follow the money" - from my perspective (as a patron) the relationships are "patron → patreon" (I pay a single bill from them, once a month or slightly more, but not once per artist) and then "patreon → artist". (Banks/CC/paypal are more interested in the first one, IRS is more interested in the second one...)

I already don't know any direct "wallet" information about the artist, and that's kind of the point - every direct micropayments approach since at least the mid-1990s has failed, so we have aggregation instead, otherwise we'd be spending more on the transaction than on the artist.

Well, that presupposes that patreon itself is the publisher and you as patron/payee are doing business with them and not with the author. Which is the same model that youtube uses. I have never been author on patreon, so i have no idea about their setup. If this is the case then obviously that is perfectly legal. The problem then becomes censorship because patreon then is the owner of the license for your work that they are selling themselves and giving you your cut. Quite a different business model but one that "protects" the identity of the author because they are essentially sub-contracotrs.

Buddy are you for real? It’s perfectly legal to sell under a fake name (or for instance, as an LLC) as long as you pay your taxes as your real identity!

You need to maybe not try to replace patreon if you’re this clueless.

But can't anyone just look up the owner of the LLC, that info is public?

I believe that if someone with a patreon wants their identity to stay private, making an LLC (depending on the name of it) may backfire?

There are several states where you can form an LLC without making your information public. In New Mexico you don’t even need to tell the state.

I can’t tell if you’re talking about the US though, if you’re referring to other countries it may be much more restrictive, lots of places seem to require ID and registration for basically anything.

Isn't Patreon the merchant of record?

You make a lot of outlandish claims. I'm confused - are you claiming that Patreon is an organized crime syndicate?

patrons pay patreon, not the author. patreon pays the creator. how can it be illegal? patrons trust patreon to deliver their money to the authors, but that is irrelevant. the patrons pay directly to patreon.

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