Tip jar is so stupid. Why would anyone want that over just putting a PayPal link in their profile where it's treated as a gift not payment for services?!
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Even if you do it that way, there's still the option for people to mark it as a payment for a product/service. For many combinations of receiver and sender country, that's the only option they offer for one reason or another. Sometimes due to laws, but often just PayPal's choice.
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For example, if you as an American sent money to someone in India, they force it to be marked as a payment for a service.
They make you wait multiple days and then you need to go find the payment and mark a product as being received + satisfactory. It's held more after that.
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Not being able to receive only gifts rather than also payments for products/services is pretty bad. A few people retracting payments can get your account frozen. It's potentially harmful for people in countries where gifts are not taxable income too. PayPal is awful all around.
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I'm pretty sure I would just reject payment attempts marked as payment for a service when no service was rendered. I do not want to be responsible for what happens if someone decides they're unhappy with not receiving anything.
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I handle it by leaving some money in PayPal rather than always draining it back to $0 so that they don't freeze my account if people retract payments.
Don't really think I have the option to reject payments for products/services. I don't see a way to do that. I could refund it.
Sometimes they ask me to confirm payments but most of the time it just goes through.
If I look through the history, about 10% of the donations have buttons to print a shipping label and add tracking info, because they got marked as purchases for one reason or another...
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Canada has no gift tax at all and my main concern is that PayPal could theoretically send information to the government wrongly making it seem like I got taxable income through it that I didn't claim. Also bothers me that they're taking merchant fees when they shouldn't be...
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