> I never understood Patreon taking a % of money earned from creators
Possibly because you are not processing and remitting EU VAT and other digital international taxes which you should. Actually, its doubtful that a lot of people who engage in such creator activities are even aware that they should need to file taxes for that kind of income in the first place, leave aside process digital tax.
Patreon handles all of that and reports and pays it to legitimate authorities, removing all the legal and financial responsibilities from the creators' hands. As international digital tax schemes proliferate (Japan already has one or planning one, other OECD countries also), this is going to become even more important. Not that its not important right now.
This is before the fact that all chargeback, fraud etc are handled by Patreon.
...
A lot of these people, including you, confuse Patreon and similar platforms with payment platforms like Paypal. They aren't the same. At Paypal, Stripe etc, not only they don't handle digital tax for you, but also you are on your own regarding chargebacks, fraud and refunds. And if you have more than 5% of them, they can just disable your account.
Patreon could also decide to disable your account. What % of problem payments will they accept before wanting to speak to you about it? I don't imagine it's a massive amount higher than 5%.
Possibly because you are not processing and remitting EU VAT and other digital international taxes which you should. Actually, its doubtful that a lot of people who engage in such creator activities are even aware that they should need to file taxes for that kind of income in the first place, leave aside process digital tax.
Patreon handles all of that and reports and pays it to legitimate authorities, removing all the legal and financial responsibilities from the creators' hands. As international digital tax schemes proliferate (Japan already has one or planning one, other OECD countries also), this is going to become even more important. Not that its not important right now.
This is before the fact that all chargeback, fraud etc are handled by Patreon.
...
A lot of these people, including you, confuse Patreon and similar platforms with payment platforms like Paypal. They aren't the same. At Paypal, Stripe etc, not only they don't handle digital tax for you, but also you are on your own regarding chargebacks, fraud and refunds. And if you have more than 5% of them, they can just disable your account.
You don't have those issues with Patreon.