Why is Steam charging me tax now?

[Devilin83]

Steam has historically not charged tax on digital purchases due to a legal concept called “nexus.” Essentially, if a company doesn’t have a physical location where you purchased the game, there is no tax. Since Steam is an online platform without physical locations for game purchases, it has not applied sales tax but why does it charge me now?

[potato]

cause canada passed a law in july 2021

[Devilin83]

its 2024 and this is the first time i got charged

Originally posted by potato:

cause canada passed a law in July 2021

[potato]

Originally posted by Devilin83:

its 2024 and this is the first time i got charged

yea well the law is from 2021 and it's your government's cause, not valve/steam

https://mobilesyrup.com/2021/06/30/digital-platforms-tax-purchases-canada-july-1/

[nullable]

Originally posted by Devilin83:

its 2024 and this is the first time i got charged

Originally posted by potato:

cause canada passed a law in July 2021

If Valve is required by law to collect sales tax now, "they never did before" doesn't matter. If you think it's a mistake take it up with support or your government's taxing authority.

You can't blame Valve for following the law. If you don't like the law take it up with your representation.

[wesnef]

Looking through my purchase history, it looks like Steam started charging tax in the US some time in 2019.

Originally posted by nullable:

If Valve is required by law to collect sales tax now, "they never did before" doesn't matter. If you think it's a mistake take it up with support or your government's taxing authority.

And this.

[Sleepy Yoshi]

Originally posted by potato:

cause canada passed a law in july 2021

^This. There was an uproar about it at the time the law was passed and digital storefronts started collecting the taxes, including here on Steam, but they've definitely been collecting them for Canadian purchases for almost 3 years now.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by wesnef:

Looking through my purchase history, it looks like Steam started charging tax in the US some time in 2019.

2018...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/us/politics/supreme-court-sales-taxes-internet-merchants.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/06/26/dissecting-supreme-courts-internet-sales-tax-decision/#e3e12e03fbee

We had a few good size threads about this when the ruling happened. Here's one...

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/1736594593603101581/

[wesnef]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

We had a few good size threads about this when the ruling happened. Here's one...

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/1736594593603101581/

:winterbunny2023:

Ah. Heh, my last Steam purchase in 2018 was like a week before that. :D

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Devilin83:

Why is Steam charging me tax now?


Steam has historically not charged tax on digital purchases due to a legal concept called “nexus.” Essentially, if a company doesn’t have a physical location where you purchased the game, there is no tax. Since Steam is an online platform without physical locations for game purchases, it has not applied sales tax but why does it charge me now?

Enjoy... https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3057363849875846983/

[aiusepsi]

Originally posted by Kiler_best1235_Denmark:

No but for real, have you looked at the leaders of the west? I mean communist west.

Nothing about today's west is even remotely communist. Just having taxes isn't communism. Taxes are about as old as civilisation; archaeologists have found tax records that are four thousand years old[www.archaeology.org]

Government has never produced anything to the world.

As one example, the government created the Internet. The progenitor of today's Internet was ARPANET[en.wikipedia.org], which was created by an agency of the US Department of Defense. The web was created at CERN, which is a European intergovernmental organisation.