Today, the terms of service for dating apps make it clear users are going to have to pay taxes to use the service.
The fine print at Bumble.com, for example, notes that the price users are quoted for its premium service doesn’t include any “Sales Tax that may be due.”
It goes on to specify, “if Bumble determines it has a legal obligation to collect a Sales Tax from you in connection with these Terms, Bumble will collect such Sales Tax” on top of its monthly subscription charge.
If a user decides not to let Bumble collect and remit the tax to the relevant jurisdictions, then it’s up to the user to figure out how much tax they owe and where the money needs to be sent. Bumble also puts users on notice that it’s not responsible for paying penalties or interest users may incur.
It’s pretty much the cold-shower section of the dating app.
“States took two main paths to taxing dating apps,” Hess says.
For states that already had a tax on membership services (like a monthly gym membership), it wasn’t a big stretch to extend that tax to online services that bill on a subscription basis, like Ancestry.com or dating apps, he explains.
And — as with every other form of ecommerce — the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. opened the door for more states to extend taxes to cover dating apps, Hess continues.
Before the Wayfair ruling, an online dating service “never had to charge tax, because they never had physical nexus in those states,” he says.
After Wayfair, dating apps had economic nexus wherever they had a critical mass of online seekers of love.
