TSR Sharing your infomation!

[SoggyFox]

I can't think of a single country that doesn't want their tax dollars.  In some countries, where the tax dollars go to a lot more, they might be even stricter than this country, and this country is really strict.

[SimARR]

I know this is crossing the line a little...but would it be unethical to "dob them in"?

[Darqstar]

I know this is crossing the line a little...but would it be unethical to "dob them in"?

Not in my opinion.  Why should they have extra income that they don't get taxed on?  No one has ever said to me, "It's just a hobby, so you don't have to pay taxes on it."  Since I assume they are still using the benefits their tax dollars pay, why shouldn't they pay their share?   

How one would go about this and get their real life information though, is another story. 

[SimARR]

[megaphone]Calling all German taxation department workers!![/megaphone]

Something tells me thats not gonna work, surely someone here works in the American government... or knows someone working for various European taxation offices.

The other thing would be to do it in a way in which we do not stoop to there level, especially considering this is a public forum (kinda like the FA forum )

Again, if they think that we can dob them in and they can get in trouble... we may see a mass resigning among the FA's, especially the younger FA's who are a bit sheltered to the whole concept of tax. Perhaps even talking about this will be enough to 'rock the boat' among the FA's/Staff.

Good luck!

[calalily]

I mean, currently it's $300 or so per 10,000 subscriber downloads and Thomass has a second house.  They haven't figured that one out yet, so if he could find a way to make it $10 per 10,000 subscriber downloads, he'll be set.

Somehow I have a feeling that they don't earn quite this much... just follow my math here.

You're right - I basically pulled those numbers out of my arse, and when I went searching and couldn't find the actual figures, so I left it.  The amount of money they made was largely irrelevant to what I was trying to say (in that I was trying to demonstrate a dramatic reduction).

But since we're chatting about the numbers - from Sasilia's TSR account:



Bear in mind payrates vary. 

[SimARR]

That makes more sense... 300 per 10,000 downloads was just ridiculous, even still... $11,000 pocket money for a hobby over 5 years is still a good sum of money. **Mumbles about greedy people and goes back to lurking**

Thanks Calalily, but I did redo my math on the idea on $10 per 10000 DL's based upon my Cashcraft example.

But since were looking at Sasilia here... look at her incentive point count:
3039880 points  divided by 10000 x 10
=$3039.88 USD

Thats a lot of money to earn from a hobby a few hours each night. Now we know that Thomas takes a ginormous cut of all profits. Say there 30 FA's, all averaging having made $4000 in the last 5 years thats 120,000+ that his artists are making. (Pulling #'s out of my ass here) ~Lets say that each subscriber Downloads 4000 files (That seems to be the community average on CC folder sized) in there 5 years at TSR. To get 120,000 $$'s worth of incentives the subscribers would have to download at least 300,000 files a year. (120,000 x 10,000 divided by 4000)

At 4000 DL's each, there would need to be at least 75,000 subscribers a year.

Current Subscription rate is 10USD a month or so, so 75,000 x 10 is 750,000
Thats approx. $620,000 that Thomas and co. have made from a GAME.

These figures are also grossly under because they don't even consider the countless ex FA's, Downloadaholics or the Sims 1 community predating TS2.

Thats gotta bump the figures well over 1.5 million USD of a website selling pixels for a game... all illegally.


Edit:/ Just went on TSR... apparently theres lots of FA's other 8 million downloads mark, Including Windkeeper who is over 22 million downloads. This makes my figures way under, I'm to lazy to redo it with new numbers so lets just double thomas's income and be done with it.

[dietofworms]

But not all that is sheer profit for Thomas, right?  Doesn't he have expenses, too--like server upkeep, office staff salaries, whatever improvements he makes to the site, and payoffs to Anita?

And also, to play devil's advocate for a minute, we don't KNOW that the TSR FA's don't pay taxes.  I was an independent contractor for many years, and while it was my own responsibility to take care of my taxes, I always did. *puts on halo*

Fake paranoid edit:  I'm NOT defending TSR on any score.

[Devilfish]

I know this is crossing the line a little...but would it be unethical to "dob them in"?

No. I wonder how to do that though. Somehow I don't think shooting them an email would be enough or I'd be on that right now.

Another thing I was thinking; are there minors that are FAs or is there a minimum age? I'm just asking because if some of them are minors, TSR is technically guilty of using child labour and the European Union sort of frowns on that

[SoggyFox]

So does the US - unless someone is 16 they have to have parental permission for a job, and they can only work so many hours - 15 and you need parental permission.  Younger and it has to be a family owned business and I still think its watchdogged.

[HugeLunatic]

I think the parental permission thing might vary based on state as well.

In MN.  No consent for under age 16 required to work.  During the school year, they may work 3 hours a day, and not one minute past 7pm, for a maximum of 18 hours per week.  It's a $10,000 fine.  This includes weekends, except they may work for up to 8 hours but still not past 7pm.  All work done must be visible to customers.  So you can't hire a 14 or 15 year old to wash dishes back in the kitchen.  I spent 5 years in restaurant management.    While 14 & 15 yrs olds have lots of rules governing what they can and cannot do, they are generally really good workers.

During summer break, they may work up to 40 hours per week.

Minors (under 18) can earn $4800 +/- per year without filing.  That amount changes and since I don't have a child working right now I don't know the exact amount.

[pickles]

I volunteered at a thrift shop run by a family friend at 14. Worked 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. And didn't get paid for it, though she always brought me lunch and breakfast, and let me take home anything I saw and particularly liked. And that was fine by me, got me out of the house, and she really needed help. And helped impress a good work ethic on me too. 
In reality, she couldn't pay me, as that would make the whole thing illegal since I was under age to be working.

[tired and homeless]

I lived in DE when started working. I was 14. All I had to do was getting a work permit, my school signed it, my parents signed it, and my employer signed it. That was it.
I don't remember all the stipulations though.

I worked for a cable company owned studio. They had two crews - one for the smaller studio, one for the larger studio. I started with smaller studio. At first, I answered phones for the daily live show we produced. 330pm to 600pm Monday-Thursday, the show ran from 430-530. Then I got trained on cameras, teleprompter, the multiline phone operation (putting the callers on air and whatnot), graphics, audio engineering, floor directing, hosting, and switching (technical director, operating the switcher for multicamera operations). We also did pre-recorded shows on Saturdays, and we worked from 8am to 6pm. 10 hour day. And e got paid $10/hr. That was pretty awesome for a 14-year-old. With that crew, I was making $200/wk working 20 hrs a week before taxes. At 14 years old.

I ended up getting recruited for the bigger studio once I turned 16. I could work more hours and stuff. I still did all the small studio stuff, because the big studio did stuff every day except Saturdays, Fridays during basketball seasons, and Sundays during football.

At 16, my average work week was something like this:
Monday: Live show, 330-600, $25. City council, 630 to usually 930,10pm. $65 set rate.
Tuesday: Live show, 330-600, $25. CNN Local Edition Headline News, 630 to usually 930 (or whenver we got finished). $60 set rate.
Wednesday: Live show, 330-600, $25. Levy/county court, 630 to 10pm. $65 set rate.
Thursday: Live show, 330-600, $25. Con Sabor OR Haitian Delmarva Focus OR 888 Employee Network OR some random field event, 630 to about 1030 (or whenever finished), $60 for shows, $80 for event set rates.
Friday: High school football, 430-1030, $85 set rate OR OFF
Saturday: Pre-recorded shows, 800-600, $100.
Sunday: College basketball, various times usually about 6 hours, $85 set rate OR OFF.

So at 16 years old, I was working an average of 35-40 hours a week on top of high school, making around $535 before taxes. I think because I went to a vocational high school where I was earning a technical degree in broadcasting, the company had a partnership and I was allowed to work full-time.

But during the summer, we didn't have football or basketball seasons, but a few more events. We also didn't have the Saturday shoots because that was a school related thing (academic competitions between school teams). We covered baseball and stuff during the summer, also our big production in the summer was this all-star football game where each player sponsors a mentally handicapped kid and stuff. Its a 17 hour work day in the summer for us. In the summer also, we'd go to another studio and do their CNN Local Edition Headline News (because the company thought it'd be cheaper to transport our team down there instead making a new crew for that studio). Less going on in the summer, December is usually dead, but from September to May, we're packed. I'd like to continue doing it, but I don't live in the area anymore. I did that for a total of 5.5 years.

[Anyerfillag]

Hm. There's been a spate of PDF attacks on several sites this week. Even Wikipedia came up with this one. Still, that's interesting how that site got hacked. Desperate bastards.

I few pages old but this seems to be related to this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7784908.stm. It appears there have been several attacks and IE is vunerable. So its not a soley TSR thing, so be careful!

[CJane]

Hm. There's been a spate of PDF attacks on several sites this week. Even Wikipedia came up with this one. Still, that's interesting how that site got hacked. Desperate bastards.

I few pages old but this seems to be related to this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7784908.stm. It appears there have been several attacks and IE is vunerable. So its not a soley TSR thing, so be careful!

Hmm, interesting. I was using Firefox initially, then tried accessing in Chrome. Still came up with the PDF crap. I loathe IE almost as much as TSR.

[Dina D]

well my virus scan didn't pop up anything with that pdf.php but I was getting the funky adobe pop ups and browser crashes after I left my picture for ThomAss and Atwat...and then got banned   Then when I ran my virus scan later that night I did get a Trojan Horse Vundo virus that came up...hopefully it is all gone now...and I don't use IE, I use FF.