catpower1980: To make the estimation=> 100K copies x 5$(discounted launch price) => 500K $
=> minus VAT in EU and store cut thus around 60% remaining => 500K x 0.6 => 300K
Taking the worst annual tax ratio for business in EU (don't know in US) => 300K x 50% => 150K left for the dev (Sam Barlow)
The-Business: Why does the whole turnover gets taxed as earnings? There have been production cost before which can be booked as loss and deducted.
Yep, that's right, that was a quick and dirty estimation just to give an estimated range ;)
Now, as you suggest, let's imagine the end-budget (producion costs like heavy-marketing included) was 100K, it would be like 300K - 100K => 200K before annual taxes (with business costs deducted thus)
The thing is that Sam Barlow is apparently registered as a sole propietorship business (a "physical person" as we say in Belgium) as he's mentioned both as dev and publisher and I guess he didn't start a "moral" company with his own name (unless he wants to do it like Donald Trump ^o^)
=> That means that in Belgium he still would be taxed at a 50% ratio as the threshold for this tax rate starts at 37.750 euros and above.
If "Sam Barlow" was effectively a registerd company (like a LLC), he would only get taxed at 33% or less (Belgium numbers....)
To complicate things, the game was partially funded with the Indie Fund which as some big paybacks( not sure if it's the right word). Details here:
http://indie-fund.com/about/
Anyway, it would be interesting to have a total financial report for this game like the dev of "Lemma" did (I made a topic on the forum) but I don't think it will happen :(
