Panic Passes Trump Tariff Refunds Back to Playdate Customers (arstechnica.com) 35
Panic is refunding Playdate customers the 19% tariff charges it passed along while the Trump administration's import duties were in effect, after the Supreme Court ruled the tariffs illegal and the company began receiving refunds from the government. Panic says the money "just [wasn't] ours to keep." Ars Technica reports: In an update posted on the Playdate help site this week, Panic noted that it has finally "begun to receive refunds of the tariffs we paid in the last year" and had consequently "refunded all tariffs charged to customers."
In the initial version of that tariff note, Panic explained that it couldn't afford to simply "absorb" the 19 percent tariffs it was being charged to import Playdate hardware made overseas because "our margins on Playdate are low." As such, while the tax was in effect, it was passed along to customers as an explicit subtotal line item at the bottom of all Playdate orders. That's in contrast to companies like Nintendo, which vaguely cited "market conditions" and tariff "uncertainty" in raising the asking price of legacy hardware and some Switch 2 accessories last year.
Speaking to Game Developer, Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser said filing paperwork to claw back these taxes and processing tariff refunds for customers took a fair bit of backend work. Still, he said returning that money to Playdate purchasers in the end was a no-brainer. "It's just not our money to keep, and it felt really good to give it back," Sasser said. "That's an easy way to know you made the right decision." "It just felt like the right thing to do," Panic wrote in a refund email message shared on Reddit.
In the initial version of that tariff note, Panic explained that it couldn't afford to simply "absorb" the 19 percent tariffs it was being charged to import Playdate hardware made overseas because "our margins on Playdate are low." As such, while the tax was in effect, it was passed along to customers as an explicit subtotal line item at the bottom of all Playdate orders. That's in contrast to companies like Nintendo, which vaguely cited "market conditions" and tariff "uncertainty" in raising the asking price of legacy hardware and some Switch 2 accessories last year.
Speaking to Game Developer, Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser said filing paperwork to claw back these taxes and processing tariff refunds for customers took a fair bit of backend work. Still, he said returning that money to Playdate purchasers in the end was a no-brainer. "It's just not our money to keep, and it felt really good to give it back," Sasser said. "That's an easy way to know you made the right decision." "It just felt like the right thing to do," Panic wrote in a refund email message shared on Reddit.
WHo? (Score:2)
Re:WHo? (Score:5, Funny)
Google is your friend.
Should I Google 'journalist' first, or has that already been replaced with 'fuck off and do it yourself'?
Ah, the hallowed honorary halls of Fine Journalism..don't we look forward to bestowing them with the great delusionists of the laziest decade ever..
Re: (Score:2)
Google is your friend.
I googled playdate panic and got your mom's number.
I tinker a bit on Playdate (Score:2)
I know what the Playdate is and who Panic are, but one sentence of context in an article is not too much to ask.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:WHo? (Score:5, Informative)
With a product named Playdate, and not much else to go on, I couldn't tell if the article was safe to read at work, or do a web search.
It would have been quite easy to start the summary with:
> Panic, creator of the tiny, handheld game system Playdate, is refunding customers the 19% tariff charges it passed along...
Re: WHo? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But then we REALLY wouldn't click their link. How else are they suppose to attempt to get us to see ads? :)
Re: WHo? (Score:2)
If a search for "playdate" comes up with objectionable shit, that says a lot about how your behavior has driven your search algorithm.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, you're still expecting a Slashdot "editor" to do something besides mash the "accept" button to user submitted stories.
Good luck with that.
Re: (Score:2)
Have fun and make sure your parents know what you're up to!
Re: WHo? (Score:2)
Um. Is it possible you've never noticed that links work with a single click?
Give it a try, it's wild.
You're welcome :)
So in the end (Score:2, Interesting)
It was just a cash grab for mega corps. How much money is Amazon and Walmart returning?
Re: (Score:2)
None, because the calculation is basically impossible.
The Playdate is easy - it's built in one place and they charged the tariffs as they were charged.
But a product sold by Walmart or Amazon isn't so tidy. Perhaps the supplier discounted their prices, so technically the tariff refund should go to them? After all, the tariff was paid, but the price didn't change. Others they may have decided to absorb some tariffs on both
Re: (Score:1)
Curious how if you or I take something illegally we go to jail. These tariffs were ruled illegal. Let's have a follow up.
Re:one ethical company (Score:4, Interesting)
Tariffs are a tax collected by business for the government. Since Trump is the one who gave the illegal order, he would be responsible, but since the Supreme Court has ruled a president is untouchable, nothing will be done.
Re: (Score:3)
You did. Your duly elected representative did something illegal. He's not going to jail or getting fined because apparently he's immune to the law. You're not either because collective punishment, etc. You're also not getting a refund of the money you stole from yourself. Consider it a lesson in taking important shit seriously.
Two ethical companies (Score:4, Informative)
Headline crashed my brain (Score:2)
How do I parse this? Panic passes, Trump tarriff back to a playdate for customers?
Re: (Score:2)
Eats shoots and leaves.
Re: Headline crashed my brain (Score:2)
Private Freedom vs. Public Demand. (Score:2)
he said returning that money to Playdate purchasers in the end was a no-brainer. "It's just not our money to keep, and it felt really good to give it back," Sasser said. "That's an easy way to know you made the right decision." "It just felt like the right thing to do," Panic wrote in a refund email message shared on Reddit.
Ah, the feel-good Freedoms only a privately-held company can have. True joy.
Enjoy it.
For if you sign your soul to the IPO, the no-brainer moral toll becomes a legal department saying.."Yeah, yeah, fuck the return..just tell me how much the fine is if we get caught doing anything less than our 'fiduciary duty' beholden to profit at any cost.."
Huge fail on the ruling (Score:2)
The SCOTUS should have directed the Treasury to require companies applying to submit reasonable evidence that they did not pass the costs onto their customers before paying them.
Chaos (Score:2)
With all the on/off tariff chaos, it will be a nightmare to figure out if a tariff was in force at the time of purchase, if it was paid by the business, if it was included in the purchase price, and if it has been reimbursed at any of those stages.
What a mess.
Re: (Score:2)
Its worse than that. Tariffs are not directly applied to the product, they are paid for by business at the time of import. The time of purchase to the consumer may not even be the time of purchase for the business so the tariff may or may not apply to any given consumer transaction, you would need to be able to track individual inventory sent to individual consumers.
Furthermore that assumes that tariffs were passed on directly to consumers. That isn't necessarily the case either. Some businesses absorbed so
some broken window fallacy applies here too (Score:2)
Consider a completely fantastic scenario in which all private companies are so honest and return illegally-collected tariff funds to their customers. Then the "tariff tax" never happened, right? Except millions of dollars have already vanished into the ether, because