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Comment by thekevan | Hacker News Reader

Patreon is the U.S. and not subject to European laws.

Patreon is also really just a distributor of money, they don't provide the person with a service.

Why is a person with a web design business looking to use a site used to help artists who have trouble connecting art and normal business income?

Finally she tweeted about how many people saw that blog post and said she should have included a tip jar. It really seems like she cares more about what she can get out of a situation than anything else.

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"Patreon is the U.S. and not subject to European laws."

What makes you think this is true?

Why can't Americans play poker online? Why does Amazon have to collect state taxes for states they don't have a physical presence in? Google is forced to censor French and German search results. Facebook is forced to follow EU privacy laws. And on, and on. Having customers in a country means you're doing business in that country in this modern world.

IANAL. But you may want to check with one.

"Why can't Americans play poker online?"

American anti-gambling laws.

"Why does Amazon have to collect state taxes for states they don't have a physical presence in?"

Because those states count things like affiliate programs and subsidiary companies as a sales tax "nexus". Amazon tends to kill those programs to avoid being taxable. They only collect sales tax in 24 states.

"Google is forced to censor French and German search results. Facebook is forced to follow EU privacy laws."

Yeah, because they have operations in those countries, and can thus be sued there. Also, perhaps, because they might be blocked in the relevant countries, and would rather stay in those markets.

The EU simply cannot make me collect VAT (or do any other crazy thing they think up), because I'm not in the EU. They can ban me or my services or products in their jurisdiction, or make life hard for my customers in their jurisdiction, which may be enough.

"American anti-gambling laws."

It's more than that. The U.S. actually prosecuted executives of foreign online gaming companies for providing services to U.S. citizens. The problem is not that American citizens fall under U.S. law, but foreign companies have to follow U.S. law for online only services as well. [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers

Not really, every business with European based customers needs to comply with EU vat https://quaderno.io/blog/is-your-business-ready-for-the-new-...

Well, so says the EU, but extraterritorial jurisdiction issues are very complicated and ultimately require cooperation between different countries to ever enforce.

You have a great day too, thekevan!

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