Does this make me #2 ban on GH?

[7bit]

You mean using Massdrop as money collector? Why not. They are way better than PayPal!

[rknize]

You mean using Massdrop as money collector? Why not. They are way better than PayPal!

In my head that is their primary purpose

[IvanIvanovich]

Yep, just as a payment collector only. I would still want us to have full control over fulfillment and everything else. But I still think it deserves some discussion about some details before I went ahead. Not just for me either, but in general as I think it will be an ongoing issue for organizers. It would be nice to have most people have a mostly same way of handling things to have people be familiar with what to expect.
Too bad paypal couldn't have been officially 'located' somewhere nice and lax like Belize.

[rknize]

Too bad paypal couldn't have been officially 'located' somewhere nice and lax like Belize.

You'd still be in a legal grey area and at risk if you are ever audited for any other reason. This has been the case since day one and a few GB organizers have been hit HARD in April. The way GBs are done now no longer scales...at least not in the US. Some entity needs to handle the money and that entity needs to be paid for and operated even if they make no profit. It won't be free...even non-profits have to pay hefty filing fees and someone needs to devote a non-trivial amount of time managing it. That's the vacuum that I see MD fulfilling. Now obviously, they want to do more than that and with good reason. They are trying to be profitable...something that venture capitalists expect for some strange reason.

[webwit]

Maybe we should start an association and hire a tax guy/accountant each year. Will be cheaper than using for profit companies and it would be controlled by the members.

[dirge]

Maybe we should start an association and hire a tax guy/accountant each year. Will be cheaper than using for profit companies and it would be controlled by the members.

If everyone would chip in so I can move to Monaco I'll do it

[fossala]

Why is everyone against paying tax. It doesn't seem like such a bad thing to me. I quite like my police and healthcare (sorry US guys, forgot you aren't a first world country yet).

[dirge]

I'm not against paying tax for police and healthcare but so much of it is wasted... Welfare reforms coming to the UK its going to have a significant impact. Social landlords should be scared.

Do feel sorry for the americans, must be terrible to fall ill over there.

[webwit]

Despite the fact that western governments don't work for the people but for their wealthy sponsors and themselves, this isn't about that, but just to make sure group buy people don't pay income taxes on what is not income. We already payed income taxes. If you have an association where yearly the same amount goes out as went in and there is a clear administration, there is nothing to tax.

[IvanIvanovich]

I pay my taxes, on money that I actually get. I do not get money from groupbuy, I merely held it for a short time before paying for the production. Why should I have to pay tax on funds that I did not get to keep? That is what I have an issue with. If paypal deducted the outgoing payment from the incoming payment and submited that to IRS there would have be no problem at all. But no, they just take all the incoming payment and go look IRS they made all this money when that was not the case at all. Thier reporting system is stupid and broken.
Some sort of collective would be a great move, but it might be a hard sell as many idiots will view it as some sort of socialist devilism.

[Jmneuv]

Is overseas bank transfer not feasible? (like Überweisung) .. f'ing pp..
SEPA seems to work ok in the eu. (based on my limited experience with it)

[webwit]

Some sort of collective would be a great move, but it might be a hard sell as many idiots will view it as some sort of socialist devilism.

More like an amateur football team, a bridge club, or a society of stamp collectors.

[IvanIvanovich]

Many US banks don't use the same SWIFT system for transfers for some reason, it's not fully implemented here and many only use EFTS. Some also charge quite high fees for it. It is really a lot more difficult to use wire transfer here. I think that was a major reason why paypal caught on so much. That and people feeling safer using an email address instead of giving anyone thier actual account number.
Some banks like mine have implemented an easier system sort of like paypal, but it only works between customers of a few other cooperating banks.

If we could have a whatever you want to call it, and have a proper accountant and legal advice to avoid anyone being personally responsible for any taxes or whatever it would be a good thing. Maybe just charge everyone that uses it some small annual membership for administration.

[rknize]

Why is everyone against paying tax. It doesn't seem like such a bad thing to me. I quite like my police and healthcare (sorry US guys, forgot you aren't a first world country yet).

That's quite a tall horse you have there. It is about avoiding paying income tax on something that is not income. Technically, we are also paying sales tax to SP, no? So I don't think there is any real tax abuse going on here. The issue is that the system is setup to prevent what we are trying to accomplish to close loopholes for people that would abuse it.

If you take the Internet out of the equation and assume we were all colocated, everyone would hand the GB organizer a wad of cash and they would then put in the order to SP and pay it with cash. The organizer receives the goods and we all stop by to pick it up.

[Soarer]

Rename this thread to "dangwang's an attention seeking drama queen who didn't get propa-banned and anyway didn't get much attention from it"

So yeah... how about a thread just for discussing massdrop, paypal bastards, and this kind of stuff?

Multiple problems with the association idea...
1. There would need to be one in each banking zone, otherwise each small payment would suffer a comparatively large transfer charge. By the sounds of it, USA is not one banking zone in that sense.
2. Associations are not exempt from VAT (aka sales tax, whatever) and import duties when supplying goods. I'm not sure what the situation would be if the goods were drop-shipped, but then the postage costs would be higher.
3. It's quite a lot of work. Every group buy would have to route through the associations, one of which would have to take on dealing with each supplier. The other associations would deal with each other in routing the money and transferring valid legal paperwork. There would be costs involved with all of this.
4. Even if it all worked, it sounds rather like massdrop, except without any defined terms and conditions at all, and without the ability to accept credit cards.

[webwit]

An association (in the Netherlands at least) could accept IBAN, paypal, creditcard, whatever, so you only need one, and isn't about dodging VAT. It is exactly not like massdrop, because the members would control it and it's legally bound not for profit (instead of 3rd party control for profit). But we would have an entity that can centrally accept payments and pay the group buy bills, and no one has to worry about personal taxes or one guy walking with 20k. Who receives the goods and how it is distributed is a separate discussion.

I hope the Demongolator will split this to a separate discussion, but he seems still occupied with the previous Massdrop split.

[Soarer]

Sure, IBAN works within Euro countries, but even from UK there is a fee on each transfer, which is why I said per banking zone. There is effort, responsibilities and costs in getting set up to accept credit cards.

The physical and logical routing of the goods has to be considered at the same time. If nothing else, the association becomes the legal owner of them for a time (even though they have a 'debt' of those same goods to the buyers). Therefore the location of the association could have an effect on taxation. IANAL... unfortunately they would probably be needed.

[webwit]

Just pick the cheapest/best method for you (paypal, IBAN or credit card), I don't see the problem, it's always better than Paypal only especially when IBAN is free for a member. What works best for us would need to be investigated (setting up those payments methods ourselves or using a payment provider). Physical and logical routing has to be considered with any group buy, it is in the nature of a group buy. In general this is not about zero effort, otherwise we wouldn't be a community handling their own group buys where a bunch of people put in a bit of effort for a common goal, but just a collective of shoppers at massdrop etc. The point is to avoid that, unless of course most people prefer to be shoppers only. I kinda like the idea because an association could also handle the hosting, which would increase deskthority's bus factor and it would become truly member controlled.

[IvanIvanovich]

Hmn, that is another way to maybe get around some of these troubles, take payment the old fashioned way with a money order or something lol.
If there is going to be some attempt at making an association, getting some legal advice would probably need to be the first step.

[webwit]

Yeah, a notary for example could advise the best format and country for our goal and taxes. I'm currently doing a gig at Deloitte (accountancy - them, not me), I think I'll start to bug some of them for tips before I hire an adviser for money.

[Ascaii]

Great idea webwit, this seems like a promising path to investigate.

[7bit]

I suggest Lëtzebuerg.

We would also need accounts is countries like USA, Canada, China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan.

This way we can collect money locally and need only send some little amount from one place to the other if necessary if we collect too few to pay for a group buy.

This system could even handle user to user transactions.

In fact, I already do this today.

[guilleguillaume]

I really like this idea. I'm not a huge fan of Paypal myself for many reasons and all you've said looks promising.

[zulios]

I really like the idea of an association too. I don't know how it is handled in other countries but in France is is a heavy load of paperwork however, and I have seen cases where the managing team had full power over decisions that had to be taken. If the association solution is to be used, it would be nice to consider preventive measures to avoid that kind of problems. People need to feel confident about using it or it would be all for waste.

[webwit]

It's probably different in each country. In the Netherlands there are two kinds, one with limited personal liability for the board members, with official statutes which can only be changed by member vote and must be stored and approved by a notary. So in the beginning you must make sure such statutes don't give full power to a few people but requires the vote of members to decide things. It must also state how the board is formed (such as elected). There's also a less official kind where there are less rules and the board can do whatever it wants, but is liable for losses and such. The main problem (or opportunity depending your view) is that these constructions were all made for the Old World, where such clubs are local or national at the most, unlike our situation which is very international. Stuff like taxes, country and limitations (must founders, board members or members live in that country?), laws, etc.

[rknize]

On the US side, the wheels have been turning on the subject of a nonprofit for a while now (post r00tworm). Its a lengthy process and there are still a lot of things that need to be figured out. Nothing to announce yet.

[DanGWanG]

Sorry to keep you all waiting, I've been meaning to post this for a while. Remember when tsangan unloaded all his stuff right before all the cool new Cherry products started coming out? Well..he's known for a while, since September 2012 and longer. This is word for word, unedited in a conversation with yours truly. Why am I posting this? Simply because he's a liar and hasn't ever really helped me get anything even though I've at least helped him a few times and even sent him some free keycaps! Oh, and also because he is a trustworthy moderator of GH! Full unedited for your reading pleasure.

Some conspiracies I made at the time was that he was working with Sherryton all along despite denying some of that in our other chats. Also, he didn't like what lysol was doing with the groupbuy hence his biased opinion as a moderator in the original interest check thread. My theory is that tsangan, mkawa and sherryton are all involved in using moderator power to control the retailers market on GH. Long story short, don't trust any of them.
---

Calvin: how many sets of dolch, beige, black you have?
well mainly dolch

me: lol
4 dolch, 4 beige NIB, 3 black
the dolches, 1x is virtually new
2x are lightly used
1x used on my kmac daily

Calvin: if you can good trades or cash for the dolch and beige you should do so

me: how come? something big coming? or next cherry project?

Calvin: its bigger then the cherry project
imagine cherry tooling able to make new sets now
that

me: who?

Calvin: dont tell ANYONE
im just telling you so you can unload
lol
dolch mainly

me: i just picked up 2x NIB g81s

Calvin: beige im assuming you got them at a good price
which is good to keep still

me: yeah under 70
each

Calvin: yeah
no need to unload those

me: i can get 2 more if you're interested
for the same price

Calvin: oh yeah i would be
;o

me: but it'll cost you knowledge
=)

Calvin: LOL

me: i'll have the guy PM you

Calvin: im only relasing what i can or else i wont get more info, info has it that red esc will be remade
as well as RGB DS

me: so then splats are the way to go

Calvin: this is not replica
this is the OG shit
just remade
same tooling and molds

me: so its cherry
or not cherry?

Calvin: its cherry machine but not cherry

me: got it

[DanGWanG]

Some additional testimonials about mkawa is that he's called me mentally ill and that I suffer from manic depression. Probably true as a result of GH overlords, but I was once a happy person until he took over. So I don't know what's up with that. Anyway, here's another testimonial from another big time GH member who shall not be named, but by his grammar style, you could easily figure out who he is =)
---
as you've noticed, i also got banned.

and this is all ming's doing.

he's the one pulling the strings and he washes his hands by making others do his dirty work.

if you could see the amount of shit he talks about others on skype.

but alas, geekhack has gone to shit since he became an admin.

kawa is the cancer that is killing GH. not the other mods/admins.

but we haven't been seeing eye to eye lately, so i dont expect you to care nor respond.

[dirge]

Keyboard wiki leaks , nice one. Money and power eh? Sell the lot mate and walk away like a drunk from a car crash

I can't find any useful info on that site now, just money and nonsense.

[webwit]

Calvin: its cherry machine but not cherry

me: got it

And elsewhere:

Time to get out of keyboard collecting for good [...] the only catch is, all items are being sold via private message/best offer only. Call me a hypocrite but I won't care!

The fine line: All items and transactions are going to be dealt with via PM (then eventually email and paypal) only. I won't be checking this thread, and even if I do, I won't be responding to it.

I'm too lazy to take pictures of stuff

Me, I can't wait till you fuck off. You have no respect for this forum whatsoever, and are only using us to get rid of your crap, leaving in "fuck you" style, communicating to us like we, the users of deskthority, are your enemy and did something to you. Which we did not. You did something to us however:

Because in the meantime you tell us the admin of geekhack suck, for reasons which can be applied to yourself as well (!), because you also knew about GMK, didn't disclose, which meant various people bought stuff for premium prices from your offloading buddies, uninformed about GMK. That makes you a nasty element of the keyboard community, of the same level of nastiness as you attribute to the gh admin.

So Dan, when your buddies were offloading their caps, did you warn the victims that they were being ripped off? Or did you watch and do nothing, and only used this ammo to attack your no-longer buddies long afterwards, for your personal crusade? You're not much of a man at all.