rolanni | Patreon Accounting Post

Here is the promised accountability post for the first completed Patreon month in support of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.

By April 30 end-of-day, 203 kind people had pledged a total of $1,493

Six people pledged in May, and were not billed for April by Patreon, nor should they have been. The system works!

Two pledges were denied -- which is to say that the credit card company denied the charge, or the patron declined the opportunity to continue.

One pledge for $0.50 produced a $0 payout to the artists -- the entirety of that pledge went to fees

Of the $1,493 pledged, Patreon collected a total of $1,467.50, deducted $80.86 in credit card fees, and deducted its own fee of $73.39

The artists will receive (on May 5, it says here): $1,313.25

Once the artists receive their payout, they will deduct 33% or $434 and place it into the account from which they pay their taxes

$879.25 will then be available to buy cat food, people food, coffee!, to keep the lights on while we finish Alliance of Equals (due May 31!) and get ready for the Grand Northeast Book Tour, starting on June 2.

Thank you all so very much for your support, your good humor, and your continued presence in our lives.

Sharon and Steve
Scrabble, Trooper, and Sprite

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Is there any way to transmit funds (such as the direct PayPal route) which will be treated as a gift to you, and not taxable?
I am so glad that there are patrons who are financially able to provide a given level of support - and you deserve it.

When you're a freelancer, gifts of money are very tricky. You may give me a gift from the fullness of your heart, and I may receive it as such, but in the eyes of the IRS, what I will be receiving is income. Even things like gift cards to BN or Hannaford or whatnot are kind of risky. You can hardly blame the IRS -- as far as they're concerned, I do more or less nothing to receive income. If people start sending me money for doing more nothing, then -- income's income.

And, honestly, the fees aren't the worst of the deductions from the Patreon pledges -- it's that 33% off the top for our Gentle Uncle that really chews up the check.

Which is how we got into the mess in the first place. Simply put, and according to the lights of the IRS and the ACA -- we made too much money last year, and at an inconvenient time. Thus, the money we would normally be living on for the first quarter of this year went, not into the house checkbook, but largely to the Gummint. Which now wants estimated taxes for this year at a rate that...eek.

It's a stupid system we have, but it's the system.

Is there some extremely easy instructions for using the Patreon thing? I don't see any on your Live Journal page. I am an old person and very low tech. I mostly just blank out when complicated instructions are given. If there's a telephone number I can call and just give them a credit card number for your account that would be the easiest for me. Otherwise extremely simple instructions for how to use Patreon on the Live Journal Page would be great.If it's there already I can't find it. Also I find it hard to find things on web sites. I have ordered a copy of Dragon in Exile from Uncle Hugo but I guess what they pay you for one book won't buy cat food for very long.
Thank you......

I could do the Pay Pal route if there's a way to do that.

PayPal can be done in two flavors, if you'd like to donate. There is, let me stress, no obligation to send us money.

That said, to donate by PayPal, you may go to http://splinteruniverse.com and punch any one of the numerous PayPal buttons you will find at that site. When you punch the button, you will be taken to a PayPal page that will ask you how much you would like to donate, and also your username and password for PayPal.

PayPal Option Two: you may make a direct payment, by logging into PayPal and choosing "send money to." The direct payment option deducts no fees from the amount sent. You do need an email address to send to, and that would be rolanniATkorvalDOTcom in which AT is rendered @ and DOT is rendered .

Hope this helps.

It's interesting to see how it all sorts out. I've never seen a picture of how the fees work.

One of Patreon's founders, Jack Conte, is half of Pomplamoose and used Patreon to finance a tour for the band - I think the main reason he started Patreon. In the interests of transparency, he published an account of how they'd spent the money and got lots of online flack over it from people who didn't have a clue what it took to put together and conduct a tour.

I'm not going to be concerned how my pittance will be spent. I'm sure it will all be spent wisely. If Sprite suddenly sports a new tiara, I'll only assume it's her just due :)

Oh, I think I'd heard about that -- distantly, and some time ago. People are endlessly willing to complain about stuff they know nothing about.

I have the same attitude that you do, when I make donations/pledges/whatnot -- the people receiving the money know what they need to keep going. I trust them to address those issues.

This is interesting! Thank you for sharing.

I notice that cat food is first on the list. Smart humans!

Are there less fees involved with paypal. would prefer more to you and less to fees!

Playing around with the fees, (https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204606125-How-do-you-calculate-fees-), it looks like Paypal costs less for payments up to $8 and credit card costs less for higher payments. At $1, the credit card fee is $0.10 for paypal and $0.32 for card payments. Charges are based on your total pledges, not per creator.

Rethinking some of my low value pledges and how I pay...

And worth every penny! I see that the pledges are up to $1,740.00, which by my back-of-the-envelope calculations should leave you with over $1000 next time.

Thanks for the instructions for Pay Pal. I'm very used to Pay Pal. Thanks for the link.

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