Amidst payment platforms such as Cashapp stating that their app is a bank, and not a platform for tipping, or gifting money (I actually can’t remember where I read this, but I believe they said it on a social media platform), more and more are setting down restrictions on how you use their services with money you give to other people. Today’s post is about Stripe. The next corporation in-line to commit a corporate self-own, or as the gamers would say, an Epic Gamer Move.
Discovered via this Cohost post in their May financial update, and Stripe’s own terms of service, it would appear that content creation is essentially almost banned. Even if you’re on a system that doesn’t require pre-approval, like WordPress, they require goods and services to be exchanged for the money you’re receiving. And, you guessed it, it’s entirely up to them to decide what constitutes “goods and services.”
You might think this only really affects OnlyFans creators, but, trust me, it affects most anyone, or at least anyone who sells things online, or does work for free, while accepting tips (like writing a blog).
A lot of this is due to the fact that the government in the US has created a new threshold in that any extra income you make through apps like Paypal, Venmo, and Cashapp over 600 dollars now requires a 1099K form. Because taxing people who make under 50,000 dollars a year is what the government should be doing, totally not just taxing the billionaires who have all of their money in stocks and off-shore bank accounts.
What these companies and apps are doing, is what I view as the lazy-man’s way out. You restrict and ban gifting and tipping, and you don’t have to deal with the IRS so much. The rich hate the IRS.
On this website, I’ve had a subscription link at the top that led visitors to a place where they could subscribe monetarily, directly on my website. And guess what, that was connected to Stripe.
In order to avoid any problems, such as my account getting banned and money being frozen, I will be simply linking to my Patreon from here on out. Patreon already does tax forms, and it’s easy enough to “tip” someone by just doing a small subscription for one month.
My whole deal, was that I just wanted to bring everyone to something owned and operated by me, where I could accept payments, free of corporations taking pieces of that money.
But that’s a pipe-dream in a world where billionaires are stealing every word you write, every piece of art you make, for their own profit, and ensuring that the government is taxing you, just in case you happen to make a pittance of cash from the work they (the billionaires) haven’t yet stolen from you.
Because it is, after all, the overarching goal, to make sure everyone is working menial jobs they hate so that they don’t have time to complain, or fight back. Each day, living on planet Earth is more and more the most boring version of a cyberpunk dystopia anyone could have ever thought of.
Hey, I mean, at least you can strap a hunk of plastic to your face and walk around in a videogame … I guess?
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