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.
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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...
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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