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Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

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Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#581

Post by dotancohen »

Mayzie wrote: post #547
dybber wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Krita is pretty decent replacement, if you want a paid alternative, then Affinity Designer / Affinity Photo is half price right now, and they don't use a subscription model: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/

While Krita can be nice, it can also be a bit difficult and bothersome to use. For example, there is no printing support. Units everywhere (other than document creation) are in pixels and cannot be changed to millimeters, etc. Tools (like drawing a rectangle) operate on the current layer instead of creating a new one like Photoshop, which makes drawing annoying. Guides aren’t that fantastic to use. There’s a lot of a…

Why would you prefer drawing in a new layer when switching tools?

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#582

Post by TeMPOraL »

tekknik wrote: post #570
TeMPOraL wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, does the tax matter so much it's worth putting it on every price sticker? I'd argue no - it's not like you can opt to not pay it. I assume your sales tax works like ours (Poland), i.e. per product/service category, so it's also not like you can buy a substitute product with lower tax. I like the solution we have - price stickers have full price, and printed receipts carry tax breakdown.

I can think of at least one reason where tax calculated on the final total vs each price is better (for the consumer), rounding. With tax calculated on the final total, you pay at most $0.01 extra in rounding “errors”. However with tax calculated on each price you pay at most number of items times $0.01, which is more and could add up over time. I personally want to give the gov as little of my money as possible.

That depends on whether they're rounding, or taking a floor or ceiling :). With proper rounding, it's a wash. I just did some back-of-the-dev-console calculations on a random groceries receipt I found on my desk, and I discovered that if the tax was calculated per item, I'd pay 0.01PLN less of it!

Regardless of the rounding method, the fair way is to sum up purchases and compute tax on the total, precisely to minimize the loss of precision on rounding.

Curiously, as far as I understand the Polish tax code (IANAL), the choice of the method to use is actually given to the vendor! The law recommends[0] that you calculate the tax by multiplying the rate with the total taxable amount, but also allows[1] the seller to choose to calculate per-item tax, and sum that. In both cases, mathematical rounding (half-up) is used[2].

But in practice, there's little to no difference unless you're doing a single purchase of a lot of items with weird pricing bias.

--

[0] - Dz.U.2020.0.106 t.j. - Ustawa z dnia 11 marca 2004 r. o podatku od towarów i usług, art. 106e., ust. 7.

[1] - ibid., ust. 10.

[2] - ibid., ust. 11.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#583

Post by daemin »

tekknik wrote: post #573
daemin wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been a few articles here on HN relating to free filing and automatic returns and how the tax filing industry is fighting it. One name that popped up after a quick search inside a long article was Grover Norquist. From his Wikipedia entry he is part of a political association which wants to prevent any rise in taxes. From another article I read long ago it was mentioned that this includes preventing automatic…

Ah so it's not actually this: > In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this wo…

It's an opinion I have based on outside observation of the political culture surrounding tax in the USA.

There are groups of people (political association) and vested interests (lobbyists) who want to make tax harder to pay than it needs to be so they can profit from it, either politically or financially.

In addition you need to manually calculate the sales tax for every different county in the USA on top of the sticker price. It has been suggested that this is enshrined in law and/or done by the stores themselves, but the net effect is that this sales tax is at the forefront of people's minds when going shopping.

Nearly all other countries have tax systems where the VAT/GST/Sales tax is already included in the sticker price, so you don't need to know which country has how much sales tax and manually add it on. Additionally lots of other countries have income tax systems where the authority already has all your information and can easily provide you a pre-filled tax return.

Given that the USA does not do these things and people actively block them, then my opinion is that the country as a whole has a hatred of making tax easier to pay. Most people may not want that, but they are either unwilling or unable to change it.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#584

Post by account42 »

bigwavedave wrote: post #541
sofixa wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's okay to subscribe to something, stop using it and stop paying it. When your access is cutoff due to non-payment, what's the problem?

> No, it's okay to subscribe to something, stop using it and stop paying it. When your access is cutoff due to non-payment, what's the problem? Let's look at it from a different perspective. If a coworker and I build a service in my garage from the ground up where I let users pay $100/mo month-to-month, $75/mo for a six month agreement, or $50/mo for a twelve month agreement, you're saying it's fine to agree to the t…

Yes. You can always demand 12 * $50 up front.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#585

Post by account42 »

tekknik wrote: post #570
TeMPOraL wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, does the tax matter so much it's worth putting it on every price sticker? I'd argue no - it's not like you can opt to not pay it. I assume your sales tax works like ours (Poland), i.e. per product/service category, so it's also not like you can buy a substitute product with lower tax. I like the solution we have - price stickers have full price, and printed receipts carry tax breakdown.

I can think of at least one reason where tax calculated on the final total vs each price is better (for the consumer), rounding. With tax calculated on the final total, you pay at most $0.01 extra in rounding “errors”. However with tax calculated on each price you pay at most number of items times $0.01, which is more and could add up over time. I personally want to give the gov as little of my money as possible.

This assumes VAT is always rounded up, which is not the case in e.g. Germany where it is rounded to the nearest cent - so the average rounding error cancels out to 0.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#586

Post by BryanBigs »

distances wrote: post #363
demosito666 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a very simple solution for this: whenever I'm handing my credit card information to some service, if there is a slightest chance of such bullshit (which is always the case with any subscription-based service), I just use a virtual card with just enough money on it to pay for whatever I intend to pay. Then they can prolong the subscription, sneak their stupid extras all they want.

This may work in the US (does it, really?) but mostly not in Europe. If the service provider thinks you are a subscriber and don't pay, you will eventually end up in collections. You can't just "stop paying", that will not terminate your subscription.

Why would you use your real name/address for a cloud subscription trial? I know with my disposable card provider, pseudonyms are a-ok. Sir Donald Mallard IV may have a ding in his credit report, the old chap, but I still can sleep and night somehow.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#587

Post by BryanBigs »

unixhero wrote: post #386
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but Most of the time it doesnt make a difference. You can make up any persona on the account and they wont know who to pursue. The account name and address can really be anything... and this is also true for the CC on file.

Although this is true and will work. It also amounts to some degree of fraud.

True. But any refill that doesn't state the fact upfront is also fraud. If a company is transparent that you will be automatically charged every year, and has an easy way to cancel before the date, well then that's on me. I've paid those obligations even if I'm not using the product. But if the rebill terms are hidden during the marketing process, and buried away in fine print....good luck collecting from Sammy Davis, Sr, Dirtbag Co.

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#588

Post by tekknik »

account42 wrote: post #585
tekknik wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of at least one reason where tax calculated on the final total vs each price is better (for the consumer), rounding. With tax calculated on the final total, you pay at most $0.01 extra in rounding “errors”. However with tax calculated on each price you pay at most number of items times $0.01, which is more and could add up over time. I personally want to give the gov as little of my money as possible.

This assumes VAT is always rounded up, which is not the case in e.g. Germany where it is rounded to the nearest cent - so the average rounding error cancels out to 0.

Note i said generic tax, not VAT. And I’m specifically talking about the US

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#589

Post by tekknik »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #582
tekknik wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of at least one reason where tax calculated on the final total vs each price is better (for the consumer), rounding. With tax calculated on the final total, you pay at most $0.01 extra in rounding “errors”. However with tax calculated on each price you pay at most number of items times $0.01, which is more and could add up over time. I personally want to give the gov as little of my money as possible.

That depends on whether they're rounding, or taking a floor or ceiling :). With proper rounding, it's a wash. I just did some back-of-the-dev-console calculations on a random groceries receipt I found on my desk, and I discovered that if the tax was calculated per item, I'd pay 0.01PLN less of it! Regardless of the rounding method, the fair way is to sum up purchases and compute tax on the total, precisely to minimiz…

> That depends on whether they're rounding, or taking a floor or ceiling :). With proper rounding, it's a wash.

Agreed! If they are actually rounding it will be a statistical wash.

> Regardless of the rounding method, the fair way is to sum up purchases and compute tax on the total, precisely to minimize the loss of precision on rounding.

Again, agreed, this is why we do it this way in the US.

> Curiously, as far as I understand the Polish tax code (IANAL), the choice of the method to use is actually given to the vendor! The law recommends[0] that you calculate the tax by multiplying the rate with the total taxable amount, but also allows[1] the seller to choose to calculate per-item tax, and sum that. In both cases, mathematical rounding (half-up) is used[2].

US tax code, at least as far as income taxes go, uses the same rounding method (nearest decimal) however sales tax is can be quite a bit more complicated [1].

Also somewhat related, we quote our fuel prices to 3 decimals.

[1] - https://blog.taxjar.com/rounding-issues-sales-tax-returns/

Re: Adobe charges subscription cancellation fee

#590

Post by tekknik »

daemin wrote: post #583
tekknik wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah so it's not actually this: > In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this wo…

It's an opinion I have based on outside observation of the political culture surrounding tax in the USA. There are groups of people (political association) and vested interests (lobbyists) who want to make tax harder to pay than it needs to be so they can profit from it, either politically or financially. In addition you need to manually calculate the sales tax for every different county in the USA on top of the stic…

> There are groups of people (political association) and vested interests (lobbyists) who want to make tax harder to pay than it needs to be so they can profit from it, either politically or financially.

NOPE! That's the misinformation. They don't want to make it harder to tax, they want to make it harder for the gov to add taxes. That's it.

> In addition you need to manually calculate the sales tax for every different county in the USA on top of the sticker price. It has been suggested that this is enshrined in law and/or done by the stores themselves, but the net effect is that this sales tax is at the forefront of people's minds when going shopping.

It is enshrined in law in some states, not all. And again the reasoning is so that tax cannot be hidden. Not to make it more difficult.

> Nearly all other countries have tax systems where the VAT/GST/Sales tax is already included in the sticker price, so you don't need to know which country has how much sales tax and manually add it on. Additionally lots of other countries have income tax systems where the authority already has all your information and can easily provide you a pre-filled tax return.

I'll need some evidence of this, as this is not my experience having traveled to many different countries. Some do, not most.

> Given that the USA does not do these things and people actively block them, then my opinion is that the country as a whole has a hatred of making tax easier to pay. Most people may not want that, but they are either unwilling or unable to change it.

Again NOPE. It's a hatred of ever increasing taxes. The gov must prove it needs the money, not just have their hands in our checkbooks whenever they're dry.

So ultimately you have a different view on taxation, and that's fine. What's not fine is lying about why the other side is doing it. This is where that divide is coming from.

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