Hi All,
As I’ll explain further down, due to several changes in tax codes (resulting in notably higher taxes for us), an increase in payment processor fees, and a need for more CPA services to handle the updated tax laws, our rates for NEW supporter plans will be going up starting next month.
To clarify and reiterate, if you currently have a plan, or if you sign up before next month, your prices will not change for the life of that subscription.
So, if you think you’ll ever want to be a supporter and get those awesome AI reviews, now is a good time to lock in your price! To sign up, simply head to https://online-go.com/supporter and click the sign up button for the plan you’d like.
The rest of this post is just details about the changes that we’re dealing with for those that are curious.
Tax law: As of July 1st 2021, Europe enacted a zero-threshold tax law, meaning for us if we take in 5 euro from a country in Europe, we need to pay VAT taxes (which is usually ~20-25% depending on the country) on that 5 euro, and more of a big deal for us, file quarterly with them and do all the accountant stuff associated with paying international taxes. Europe isn’t alone in doing this, it turns out (
) there are several countries that have adopted that strategy over the past few years, and several US state level changes as well, making it quite a headache for a small business like OGS. This is a notable change from before when you only had to worry about paying taxes if you made over a certain amount, say 10,000 euro or whatever from any given country, which we never hit because we’re just not that big.
So, we’re a small business with big business international tax problems, and I have learned more about the specifics of taxes in more countries than I ever wanted to (which, to be fair, would have been zero countries). However, I think we’ve got a decent grip on things these days, but our tax burden has gone up notably as has our costs associated with CPAs and the like to make sure we’re doing everything by the book.
In addition to this, it seems that the payment processor industry (at least both Stripe and PayPal) decided to increase rates a bit the second half of last year, so for every transaction we’re now paying more. Moreover, for several (but not all) non US/EU countries we’re needing to switch to a Merchant of Record (Paddle.com, which both deals with payments and taxes), which takes a larger cut than either Stripe or PayPal (understandably, because taxes are a pain). (If you get a note from us in the next week or two about needing to cancel your current subscription and re-signup under the new Merchant of Record, you’re not alone, you’re just from a country that has burdensome tax laws that make it so it would cost more in taxes and CPA fees than we actually collect from that country. By going through the Merchant of Record, they take care of doing the taxes for us, at the unfortunate cost of forcing everyone from those countries to re-signup. I apologize in advance for making you go through that… if there was a way to make that automatic, believe me I would have done it.).
Anyways, the sum of all of these changes is we’re going to increase the prices of our supporter plans starting in February. (Again, that only applies to new subscriptions, if you already have one or sign up before February, you’re “grandfathered” in at whatever you’re currently paying until canceled.)
And lastly, thanks for all the support, financial and otherwise, y’all have provided over the years. It’s been a lot of fun helping create the site, and it’s only been possible because of the support you’ve given, so truly thank you, and I look forward to the years ahead (even if it involves dealing with international taxes 
)
(though from outside America)