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Adobe's 9% Flash tax
61–70 of 74 posts
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#62If you want to call something a "regressive tax", please make sure that doesn't mean the exact opposite of what you're describing. A flat licensing fee would be regressive. A huge upfront cost would be prohibitive for small developers, but no problem for large companies. On top of that, it only comes into effect after $50k revenue. If Flash reduces your development costs (not making that argument one way or another),…
> A flat licensing fee would be regressive.
No. It would be flat. A regressive tax would charge the small companies more than the big companies.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#63If you want to call something a "regressive tax", please make sure that doesn't mean the exact opposite of what you're describing. A flat licensing fee would be regressive. A huge upfront cost would be prohibitive for small developers, but no problem for large companies. On top of that, it only comes into effect after $50k revenue. If Flash reduces your development costs (not making that argument one way or another),…
> A flat licensing fee would be regressive. No. It would be flat. A regressive tax would charge the small companies more than the big companies.
A regressive tax charges small companies a higher PERCENTAGE of income than large companies, which is exactly what a flat fee would do.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#64If you want to call something a "regressive tax", please make sure that doesn't mean the exact opposite of what you're describing. A flat licensing fee would be regressive. A huge upfront cost would be prohibitive for small developers, but no problem for large companies. On top of that, it only comes into effect after $50k revenue. If Flash reduces your development costs (not making that argument one way or another),…
> A flat licensing fee would be regressive. No. It would be flat. A regressive tax would charge the small companies more than the big companies.
Flat tax generally means a flat percentage not a flat fee. Regressive tax is where the rate (percentage) goes down as you scale up. A tax that is a fixed total amount (not a fixed total percentage) is regressive because the same amount is a lower percentage of a higher income. You can still charge the rich total more than the poor and have it be regressive; eg a regressive tax where you charge 10k income at 10% and 1k income at 20% you still charging the rich a larger amount.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A flat licensing fee would be regressive. No. It would be flat. A regressive tax would charge the small companies more than the big companies.
Flat tax generally means a flat percentage not a flat fee. Regressive tax is where the rate (percentage) goes down as you scale up. A tax that is a fixed total amount (not a fixed total percentage) is regressive because the same amount is a lower percentage of a higher income. You can still charge the rich total more than the poor and have it be regressive; eg a regressive tax where you charge 10k income at 10% and 1…
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Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#66"I think it's pretty peculiar that Adobe would announce such a regressive tax,... even if you created the SWF yourself (using tools like haxe), you'd still have to pay the tax." I disagree it is 'pretty peculiar', I think it is 'pretty obvious' why Adobe has done this. After years of growth and dividends and success, they have gone through a decade of sideways motions where they are resorting various and sundry cost…
While what you say is true, I disagree with you in tone.
Adobe makes money from Flash by selling licenses to the tools. During the long period of platform growth, developer community growth and turnover helped maintain profits through new license sales. Now that the Flash community is shrinking, that revenue is not sufficient to maintain the profits that will motivate Adobe to fund continuing development of the platform. This is a business, after all, not a nonprofit like the Apache Foundation.
Meanwhile, you have companies like Zynga making profits from software built on the Flash platform disproportionate to the number of Flash licenses they purchase. Zynga owes much of its success to the high market penetration of the Flash player, which makes its social games extremely accessible to its non-technical core users.
It's reasonable to place much of the blame for Flash's decline on Adobe for failing to maintain the quality of the Flash Player and for underestimating the shift to mobile/tablets. In light of those failures and what must be rapidly falling Flash tool sales, Adobe has made a decision to change the revenue model for Flash so that they can continue to profit from the platform.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not too far from the 30% that Apple charges for App Store distribution... You are paying for the use of Adobe's Flash Player.
Two totally different things. Apple has a giant marketplace thats allows people to find your app by search or discovery, they distribute it, they host it, they manage the servers for the store, they keep it secure, they host the feedback, they have a massive customer base that they offer your app to in an easy to use marketplace, etc. etc. adobe is just unlocking a portion of an language/api essentially. Ive never he…
The appstore has to be maintained true. But asking app developers to take a 30% cut to their profit margin feels like too much to me.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#68"I think it's pretty peculiar that Adobe would announce such a regressive tax,... even if you created the SWF yourself (using tools like haxe), you'd still have to pay the tax." I disagree it is 'pretty peculiar', I think it is 'pretty obvious' why Adobe has done this. After years of growth and dividends and success, they have gone through a decade of sideways motions where they are resorting various and sundry cost…
While what you say is true, I disagree with you in tone. Adobe makes money from Flash by selling licenses to the tools. During the long period of platform growth, developer community growth and turnover helped maintain profits through new license sales. Now that the Flash community is shrinking, that revenue is not sufficient to maintain the profits that will motivate Adobe to fund continuing development of the platf…
"It's reasonable to place much of the blame for Flash's decline on Adobe for failing to maintain the quality of the Flash Player and for underestimating the shift to mobile/tablets. In light of those failures and what must be rapidly falling Flash tool sales, Adobe has made a decision to change the revenue model for Flash so that they can continue to profit from the platform."
100% agreement. Going from a infrastructure support model to a rent seeking model. This will hasten the abandonment of their platform as historically rent seeking has been antithetical to supportable business models in users of the technology at hand, especially if there is no FRAND agreement in place for the technology.
Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#69Re: Adobe's 9% Flash tax
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A flat licensing fee would be regressive. No. It would be flat. A regressive tax would charge the small companies more than the big companies.
Flat tax generally means a flat percentage not a flat fee. Regressive tax is where the rate (percentage) goes down as you scale up. A tax that is a fixed total amount (not a fixed total percentage) is regressive because the same amount is a lower percentage of a higher income. You can still charge the rich total more than the poor and have it be regressive; eg a regressive tax where you charge 10k income at 10% and 1…
Or to give the US example, sales tax (and 'vice' taxes like cigarettes and liquor) - because of the different spending habits of different groups, they're effectively regressive taxes.