I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors • Hacker News Board

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#451

Post by chrismorgan » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:32 AM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #279

virgilp wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yes you need to report revenues, but... do you need a company for that? Do e.g. all Finnish photographers on Shutterstock have a company, in order to receive payments?

Yes, if you sell things (or electronic things), in any meaningful amount (no one will care for 200$ per year though), you have to set up a company or a sole proprietorship. It is like this in most western countries. The activity that you are doing in that case is called business, and of course you need to have a company or a similar business structure (like sole proprietorship) to do business. Whether all people do i…

In Australia you don’t need to set anything up. If annual turnover is over $75,000 you’ll need to register for GST which requires an ABN, and if you want a .com.au domain name you’ll need an ABN, and other entities you deal with may want you to have an ABN, but for the sorts of things in question here you won’t need an ABN.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#452

Post by Eli_P » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:41 AM UTC

loeg wrote: post #428

maxwelljoslyn wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for explaining this. As an American, I was unaware.

In the US, you're already a sole proprietorship without any registration. Of course, if you're actually doing business, you probably want the protections of an LLC, which requires registration and fees. But you can accept uncompensated gifts as an individual, and you can accept business income as a sole proprietor, all without registering for anything in particular. You are, as always, required to file accurate taxes…

> the protections of an LLC

Won't protect one guy or a small team in case of legal disputes, it's called piercing the corporate veil. I wonder if the EU has something similar.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#453

Post by mikeyouse » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 5:05 AM UTC

markdown wrote: post #438

jermaustin1 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an accountant or tax lawyer, so this isn't advise, only my back of the envelope calculation, not even using things like the 172 deduction, or business expenses, but my estimate was actually way off almost double. Gross Income: $112k - SEP IRA 25%: -$28k - Owner Health Insurance: -$15k - 199-A Deduction (20%): -$12k Total business income for taxes: $47k - Married Filing Jointly Deduction: -$24k - Total taxable…

> Owner Health Insurance: -$15k WTF? Who pays $15k PER YEAR for health insurance? That's nuts. In most countries USD$15k would pay for healthcare for 2 or 3 people for their entire lives.

I'm privy to my company's books to see the employee cost (free for the employee, usually ~$150/month to cover their family as well) as well as the total cost for all of our employees across several states. We have very high quality insurance as standard, and the full coverage plans are more like $20k - $25k/year. It's completely out of control.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#454

Post by geerlingguy » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 5:08 AM UTC

markdown wrote: post #438

jermaustin1 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an accountant or tax lawyer, so this isn't advise, only my back of the envelope calculation, not even using things like the 172 deduction, or business expenses, but my estimate was actually way off almost double. Gross Income: $112k - SEP IRA 25%: -$28k - Owner Health Insurance: -$15k - 199-A Deduction (20%): -$12k Total business income for taxes: $47k - Married Filing Jointly Deduction: -$24k - Total taxable…

> Owner Health Insurance: -$15k WTF? Who pays $15k PER YEAR for health insurance? That's nuts. In most countries USD$15k would pay for healthcare for 2 or 3 people for their entire lives.

I'm currently paying over $2K USD monthly, and that's cheap for my area (family plan) :-/

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#455

Post by micimize » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

drummer wrote: post #255

>Now, people watching the screencasts will naturally encounter these “private” screencasts and if they like the free ones, they will sponsor me (at $14/mo.) to get access. Why are we calling this 'sponsoring'? It just factually is selling a product to people for a specific amount. Sponsoring/donating is more like people giving money for something that would otherwise be free. Otherwise Microsoft could also require a…

sponsorship != donation. That's why github chose the former. Part of the copy in the sponsor dashboard is even:

> You can set sponsor tiers with different prices and rewards

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#456

Post by ergocoder » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

game_the0ry wrote: post #111

Google should hire people like this. Wouldn't it be awesome if developer talent was judged on the impact of one's open source projects / contributions versus leetcode competency? Yeah, I know - it'll never happen.

Everyone wants to hire engineers like this.

The problem is that developers like this are very very rare. They are superstars who can code and build communities.

It doesn't happen because there aren't enough candidates.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#457

Post by Eli_P » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 5:19 AM UTC

duxup wrote: post #299

hkai wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For each donated dollar, I will create and send you 100 random bytes that you can use in your cryptographic applications." $7 = 700 random bytes $15 = 1500 random bytes + 500 bytes free! $99 = lifetime* subscription for 25k random bytes per year * your lifetime or my lifetime, whichever terminates earlier

Do you have any collectible limited edition bytes?

High entropy edition: with RSA padding, signed by famous cryptographers.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#458

Post by akhosravian » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 5:55 AM UTC

Eli_P wrote: post #452

loeg wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, you're already a sole proprietorship without any registration. Of course, if you're actually doing business, you probably want the protections of an LLC, which requires registration and fees. But you can accept uncompensated gifts as an individual, and you can accept business income as a sole proprietor, all without registering for anything in particular. You are, as always, required to file accurate taxes…

> the protections of an LLC Won't protect one guy or a small team in case of legal disputes, it's called piercing the corporate veil. I wonder if the EU has something similar.

Number of employees or members isn’t relevant. Types of behavior performed is. It is worth talking to a lawyer about this if you have enough revenue this matters.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#459

Post by nbaksalyar » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 6:57 AM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #356

jermaustin1 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is how the UK does it as well. You pay income tax, then you pay your NHS fee.

We pay a "national insurance" tax in addition to income tax, but this is mainly to cover the state pension from what I understand and maternity allowance etc. As I understand it, NHS comes from general taxation. Obviously there is no actual "fee" to use the NHS at the point of use - it is all free apart from prescriptions which are the same price regardless of what you get (and you might get it for free anyway depend…

Prescriptions are also completely free in Scotland. Same for Wales and Northern Ireland, as far as I know.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#460

Post by z3t4 » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:23 AM UTC

phodge wrote: post #417

Joel Spolsky does a good job of explaining what's actually happening here in his old "Strategy Letter V" from 2002 [1]. Caleb hasn't discovered some secret means of convincing people to pay for OSS they can download for free. What he's done is create a commodity (the open source package) and then once it's popular, make a tidy profit off its complimentary product (training videos). Unfortunately it's still true that…

I wonder if you could just pick a big open source product with a large community and sell complimentary product products for it... Or that you first must be a celebrity? Or at least have enough social proof.