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0 pointsrobocat2y ago0 comments

Another issue is that software developers are sometimes paid highly and are in top tax bracket. In New Zealand the top marginal tax rate is 39% (although I am guessing most software devs would be on 33% (Over $70,000 and up to $180,000) even at 33% it is not so motivating to be offered $1000 if $330 of that immediately disappears as taxes. Plus the hassle of recording amounts and declaring them - uggggh.

In California that top marginal tax rate is 13.3% so not quite the same problem as some other countries.

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j1elo2y ago

> it is not so motivating to be offered $1000 if $330 of that immediately disappears

I get how 1000 is better than 670, but on the flip side, that's 670 extra that you didn't have before, right

If it's about where the line falls, I guess you could only accept a minimum of $1492, so after the 33% cut you get $1000 :)

But yeah, as mentioned in my other sibling comments, I believe that the administrative burden itself might be enough of a barrier for lots of people to prefer skipping the problem altogether.

birk2y ago

Great thread and feedback re: administrative considerations. I believe it's our job at Polar to streamline this as much as we can leveraging Stripe Tax, Atlas and more. Of course, it's a massive topic and each country is unique, but give us time and we'll hopefully make things easier than they are today within OSS.

Re: expectation around getting the same $ as for a paid salary as an engineer today. We cannot expect it from Day 1. It's a new pattern. However, since maintainers are in complete control (it's not a traditional bounty service) sponsored issues that are accepted should align with efforts the maintainer wants to pursue too. Before they got $0. Now, they better know what their users want and can get them to sponsor efforts that align with theirs. In addition, we want to support maintainers being able to set explicit "goals" (Kickstarter). You can achieve this today by adding such context as you add Polar to certain issues, but we can streamline it even further.

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