# Taxes and Approximate revenue?

I'm heading out from the prototype stage and towards my early/alpha stage.

In this transition period I've been interested in getting an estimate of what the revenue will be so I've come up with this in Excel.

I've considered taxes in general, VAT and fee transactions from Stripe and PayPal.

I'm from Europe.

This is my first game and I know no-one in the field so I don't really have an answer.

Is the following a reasonable assumption?

Itch.io Cut           10 %
VAT Transactions      25 %


With this as an example result:

Money Earned       +1,000 €
VAT Transactions   -  250 €
--------
SubTotal           +  750 €

Itch.io Cut        -   75 €
--------
My Final Revenue   +  675 €


Here is my question on itch.io, and here it is to my reddit question.

• Revenue is secondary. I may even give it for free and ask for donations. Now i'm more bothered by the fact that itch.io or steam, even when settling for a 70/30 revenue split gets less than what the state gets through taxes :( – Marco D'Orazio May 11 '18 at 23:39
• I'm humbly voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about accounting and not gamedev – Kromster says support Monica May 12 '18 at 5:10
• i agree :D . i asked because i didn't find open discussions about it. Got some answers and i am really glad and thankfull. – Marco D'Orazio May 13 '18 at 4:44
• I'm once again humbly voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about 7yo accounting issue and not gamedev – Kromster says support Monica Nov 27 '18 at 5:43

## Itch.io

Itch.io currently has two different payment models for VAT:

• Direct to you where each purchase is a transaction to your Paypal or Stripe account. Under this model, it is your responsibility to pay VAT, etc.
• Collected by itch.io, paid later where EU VAT (European Value-Added Tax) compliance is handled by Itch.io.

Beyond that, your price split with itch.io is pay what you want, which they refer to as open revenue sharing. By default, they start itch.io’s share rate at 10%, but you can adjust it to whatever you think is fair.

Most of this info is on or linked from itch.io's payment options & VAT support guide.

## Steam

My understanding is that Steam contracts prohibit open discussion of terms. Also, there's not a lot of public info provided. They discuss some of the info in their getting started FAQ & some of it in their reporting and payments FAQ. Due to nondisclosure agreements, it may be difficult for those familiar with the process to answer detailed questions.

• Is Steam still that secretive? I understood that secrecy back in the days where they were still making unique deals with every publisher, but now that they started steam-direct and are open to anyone who can bring up \$100 that seems pretty ridiculous. – Philipp Jun 12 '18 at 14:39
• @Philipp I don't have the necessary first hand information to answer that. Personally, I don't see the rationale for such financial secrecy. Maybe their numbers suggest that too much transparency up front directs devs to other distribution platforms? – Pikalek Jun 12 '18 at 15:11