Helix Update?
01-05-17, 07:19 PM
#276
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All power and hope to the folks who already have money on the line, but I think it'd be slightly insane for anyone to invest more now. Somebody needs to be seen unpacking their own Helix, then maybe we can discuss thoughts of this fellow actually being in the bicycle business.
In all seriousness, I respect both your right to express your opinion and the scepticism behind your points. It is a shame you seem express them in such judgemental terms.
But then I may be slightly insane.
01-05-17, 07:49 PM
#277
Senior Member
When is the next meeting of the Grand Council Of Who Is Allowed To Be In The Bicycle Business? I'd like to attend.
In all seriousness, I respect both your right to express your opinion and the scepticism behind your points. It is a shame you seem express them in such judgemental terms.
But then I may be slightly insane.
In all seriousness, I respect both your right to express your opinion and the scepticism behind your points. It is a shame you seem express them in such judgemental terms.
But then I may be slightly insane.
01-05-17, 08:13 PM
#278
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Deposit is higher risk that I lose money but perhaps lower that I don't get what I want (if the deposit helps keep Helix alive - unlikely in my view either way), with the reward that I get what I want earlier than 'wait and see' and have the pleasure of 'being invested'. If I can also mitigate the risk of loss using credit card protections, then it is all upside 
.
.
01-05-17, 08:19 PM
#279
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Fully refundable, no questions asked. What I mean is, is that if the company fails, the money would be gone, notwithstanding the refund commitment.
01-05-17, 11:20 PM
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Clearly if the company goes under then all bets are off.
01-05-17, 11:38 PM
#282
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I don't require approval of how I express my opinions. I've been very consistent for a very long time that this situation was hinky, and I've seen nothing to change my mind yet. You may continue not liking that opinion, and I will continue to hope I'm wrong. I get nothing from being right about this. A man who wanted to build a bike will not have built one, and a lot of people will be after him for money. That would suck.
I'll unpack my view separately, for those that are interested.
01-05-17, 11:39 PM
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When is the next meeting of the Grand Council Of Who Is Allowed To Be In The Bicycle Business? I'd like to attend.
In all seriousness, I respect both your right to express your opinion and the scepticism behind your points. It is a shame you seem express them in such judgemental terms.
But then I may be slightly insane.
In all seriousness, I respect both your right to express your opinion and the scepticism behind your points. It is a shame you seem express them in such judgemental terms.
But then I may be slightly insane.
01-06-17, 12:28 AM
#285
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01-06-17, 06:19 AM
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01-06-17, 06:31 AM
#288
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Fun if you enjoy a game of :chicken:
01-06-17, 08:23 PM
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Just noticed the helix website has had a minor refresh. Mostly just replacement of KS prototype images with images of updated version.
No status update. Good to see some movement though.
Be interested to see what the deposit Comm on 20th includes.
No status update. Good to see some movement though.
Be interested to see what the deposit Comm on 20th includes.
01-06-17, 10:15 PM
#290
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It's just a vote of confidence in the form of dollars. And get this, either way Kickstarter takes their cut... which is on the order of 8-10% of the total money raised. That's right... for a campaign like this Kickstarter makes somewhere around $226k as soon as the campaign finishes. And then there are chargebacks and all sorts of crap that happens where backers find a way not to pay. And THEN you have to pay taxes, which can take around 40% OF THE REMAINING AFTER FEES.
I had no idea Kickstarter took that much money right from the start. I also did not factor taxes into the equation since Kickstarter never mentions them at all. Is it true Kickstarter withholds 40% or more from every dollar raised? Does Helix have to withhold this amount? Holy Cow!
Under Slickginger's assumption, the company receives far less money than what you actually paid. Therefore, a $1,500.00 hundred dollar donation will cost the company about $720 dollars between fees and taxes! In other words, to break even, Helix has to produce your bike in under $800 dollars!
Last edited by Dahon.Steve; 01-08-17 at 05:14 PM.
01-07-17, 06:18 AM
#291
Senior Member
I had no idea Kickstarter took that much money right from the start. I also did not factor taxes into the equation since Kickstarter never mentions them at all. Is it true Kickstarter withholds 40% or more from every dollar raised? Does Helix have to without this amount? Holy Cow!
Under Slickginger's assumption, the company receives far less money than what you actually paid. Therefore, a $1,500.00 hundred dollar donation will cost the company about $720 dollars between fees and taxes! In other words, to break even, Helix has to produce your bike in under $800 dollars!
Under Slickginger's assumption, the company receives far less money than what you actually paid. Therefore, a $1,500.00 hundred dollar donation will cost the company about $720 dollars between fees and taxes! In other words, to break even, Helix has to produce your bike in under $800 dollars!
Regarding taxes this will be massively dependent from the country you live in. Typically taxes are based on your positive income on a yearly basis. As you have cost involved as well you typically won't have to pay taxes on the whole sum. The problem is that you have the income upfront whereas the cost will rise only later, after you got the money.
Obviously the easiest thing would be if you manage to produce and ship the goods within the same year that you collected the pledges in as in this case the cost and the income show up within the same fiscal year, therefor lowering your taxable income. If you do not manage to do so (as the Helix did) things start to become a bit more difficult - you may be able to shift income to one of the following years taxwise or to safe for expenses that will happen in the following years or to make use of expenses that already happend in the years before. Or you can make use of two or more different companies - one that collects the pledges that pays another one to create and deliver the goods. And so on and so on. What is possible or useful fully depends on the laws in your country and the creativity of your tax advisor if you have one. In some countries you may i.e. be forced to pay VAT on the pledges (which can be a fortune).
So in the end: Yes, the pledges are taxable income. No, problably you won't have to pay taxes on the whole lot. Therefor the 40+% off for the pledges are probably wrong in most cases.
As for the Helix: They collected 2.26 Mio CAD which today equalled roughly 1.7 Mio US$ if I remember correctly. Minus 8.x% for Kickstarter and payment fees would be something like 1.56 Mio US$ left for 1136 bikes in various specs, including (expensive) worldwide shipping to various countries in most cases - on average 1370 US$ per bike including shipping. What amount of that goes to the tax office and when we don't know (or at least I don't).
One early Kickstarter-founder here in Germany did a writeup on his bitter experiences with the tax-office. As over here we probably have on of the most complicated and awkward tax-legislations worldwide it is probably more easy in every other country... The writeup is in German and hard to unterstand even if you are German, so I add it here for reference-purposes only:
https://www.magniclight.com/index.ph...4-crowdfunding
01-07-17, 07:10 PM
#293
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It is not that simple. At first, Kickstarter charges 5% fees plus (depending on the country you are in) ~3% + 0.20$ from each pledge as payment charges (though the payment fees may sometimes be as high as 5%). So you end up with 8.something % less than you collected (with bad luck up to 10.something %). Btw: Shipping cost also count towards the funding goal and therefore also towrds potential taxable income and kickstarter-fees.
Regarding taxes this will be massively dependent from the country you live in. Typically taxes are based on your positive income on a yearly basis. As you have cost involved as well you typically won't have to pay taxes on the whole sum. The problem is that you have the income upfront whereas the cost will rise only later, after you got the money.
Obviously the easiest thing would be if you manage to produce and ship the goods within the same year that you collected the pledges in as in this case the cost and the income show up within the same fiscal year, therefor lowering your taxable income. If you do not manage to do so (as the Helix did) things start to become a bit more difficult - you may be able to shift income to one of the following years taxwise or to safe for expenses that will happen in the following years or to make use of expenses that already happend in the years before. Or you can make use of two or more different companies - one that collects the pledges that pays another one to create and deliver the goods. And so on and so on. What is possible or useful fully depends on the laws in your country and the creativity of your tax advisor if you have one. In some countries you may i.e. be forced to pay VAT on the pledges (which can be a fortune).
So in the end: Yes, the pledges are taxable income. No, problably you won't have to pay taxes on the whole lot. Therefor the 40+% off for the pledges are probably wrong in most cases.
As for the Helix: They collected 2.26 Mio CAD which today equalled roughly 1.7 Mio US$ if I remember correctly. Minus 8.x% for Kickstarter and payment fees would be something like 1.56 Mio US$ left for 1136 bikes in various specs, including (expensive) worldwide shipping to various countries in most cases - on average 1370 US$ per bike including shipping. What amount of that goes to the tax office and when we don't know (or at least I don't).
One early Kickstarter-founder here in Germany did a writeup on his bitter experiences with the tax-office. As over here we probably have on of the most complicated and awkward tax-legislations worldwide it is probably more easy in every other country... The writeup is in German and hard to unterstand even if you are German, so I add it here for reference-purposes only:
https://www.magniclight.com/index.ph...4-crowdfunding
Regarding taxes this will be massively dependent from the country you live in. Typically taxes are based on your positive income on a yearly basis. As you have cost involved as well you typically won't have to pay taxes on the whole sum. The problem is that you have the income upfront whereas the cost will rise only later, after you got the money.
Obviously the easiest thing would be if you manage to produce and ship the goods within the same year that you collected the pledges in as in this case the cost and the income show up within the same fiscal year, therefor lowering your taxable income. If you do not manage to do so (as the Helix did) things start to become a bit more difficult - you may be able to shift income to one of the following years taxwise or to safe for expenses that will happen in the following years or to make use of expenses that already happend in the years before. Or you can make use of two or more different companies - one that collects the pledges that pays another one to create and deliver the goods. And so on and so on. What is possible or useful fully depends on the laws in your country and the creativity of your tax advisor if you have one. In some countries you may i.e. be forced to pay VAT on the pledges (which can be a fortune).
So in the end: Yes, the pledges are taxable income. No, problably you won't have to pay taxes on the whole lot. Therefor the 40+% off for the pledges are probably wrong in most cases.
As for the Helix: They collected 2.26 Mio CAD which today equalled roughly 1.7 Mio US$ if I remember correctly. Minus 8.x% for Kickstarter and payment fees would be something like 1.56 Mio US$ left for 1136 bikes in various specs, including (expensive) worldwide shipping to various countries in most cases - on average 1370 US$ per bike including shipping. What amount of that goes to the tax office and when we don't know (or at least I don't).
One early Kickstarter-founder here in Germany did a writeup on his bitter experiences with the tax-office. As over here we probably have on of the most complicated and awkward tax-legislations worldwide it is probably more easy in every other country... The writeup is in German and hard to unterstand even if you are German, so I add it here for reference-purposes only:
https://www.magniclight.com/index.ph...4-crowdfunding
01-08-17, 11:41 PM
#294
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It is not that simple. At first, Kickstarter charges 5% fees plus (depending on the country you are in) ~3% + 0.20$ from each pledge as payment charges (though the payment fees may sometimes be as high as 5%). So you end up with 8.something % less than you collected (with bad luck up to 10.something %). Btw: Shipping cost also count towards the funding goal and therefore also towrds potential taxable income and kickstarter-fees.
Regarding taxes this will be massively dependent from the country you live in. Typically taxes are based on your positive income on a yearly basis. As you have cost involved as well you typically won't have to pay taxes on the whole sum. The problem is that you have the income upfront whereas the cost will rise only later, after you got the money.
Obviously the easiest thing would be if you manage to produce and ship the goods within the same year that you collected the pledges in as in this case the cost and the income show up within the same fiscal year, therefor lowering your taxable income. If you do not manage to do so (as the Helix did) things start to become a bit more difficult - you may be able to shift income to one of the following years taxwise or to safe for expenses that will happen in the following years or to make use of expenses that already happend in the years before. Or you can make use of two or more different companies - one that collects the pledges that pays another one to create and deliver the goods. And so on and so on. What is possible or useful fully depends on the laws in your country and the creativity of your tax advisor if you have one. In some countries you may i.e. be forced to pay VAT on the pledges (which can be a fortune).
So in the end: Yes, the pledges are taxable income. No, problably you won't have to pay taxes on the whole lot. Therefor the 40+% off for the pledges are probably wrong in most cases.
As for the Helix: They collected 2.26 Mio CAD which today equalled roughly 1.7 Mio US$ if I remember correctly. Minus 8.x% for Kickstarter and payment fees would be something like 1.56 Mio US$ left for 1136 bikes in various specs, including (expensive) worldwide shipping to various countries in most cases - on average 1370 US$ per bike including shipping. What amount of that goes to the tax office and when we don't know (or at least I don't).
One early Kickstarter-founder here in Germany did a writeup on his bitter experiences with the tax-office. As over here we probably have on of the most complicated and awkward tax-legislations worldwide it is probably more easy in every other country... The writeup is in German and hard to unterstand even if you are German, so I add it here for reference-purposes only:
https://www.magniclight.com/index.ph...4-crowdfunding
Regarding taxes this will be massively dependent from the country you live in. Typically taxes are based on your positive income on a yearly basis. As you have cost involved as well you typically won't have to pay taxes on the whole sum. The problem is that you have the income upfront whereas the cost will rise only later, after you got the money.
Obviously the easiest thing would be if you manage to produce and ship the goods within the same year that you collected the pledges in as in this case the cost and the income show up within the same fiscal year, therefor lowering your taxable income. If you do not manage to do so (as the Helix did) things start to become a bit more difficult - you may be able to shift income to one of the following years taxwise or to safe for expenses that will happen in the following years or to make use of expenses that already happend in the years before. Or you can make use of two or more different companies - one that collects the pledges that pays another one to create and deliver the goods. And so on and so on. What is possible or useful fully depends on the laws in your country and the creativity of your tax advisor if you have one. In some countries you may i.e. be forced to pay VAT on the pledges (which can be a fortune).
So in the end: Yes, the pledges are taxable income. No, problably you won't have to pay taxes on the whole lot. Therefor the 40+% off for the pledges are probably wrong in most cases.
As for the Helix: They collected 2.26 Mio CAD which today equalled roughly 1.7 Mio US$ if I remember correctly. Minus 8.x% for Kickstarter and payment fees would be something like 1.56 Mio US$ left for 1136 bikes in various specs, including (expensive) worldwide shipping to various countries in most cases - on average 1370 US$ per bike including shipping. What amount of that goes to the tax office and when we don't know (or at least I don't).
One early Kickstarter-founder here in Germany did a writeup on his bitter experiences with the tax-office. As over here we probably have on of the most complicated and awkward tax-legislations worldwide it is probably more easy in every other country... The writeup is in German and hard to unterstand even if you are German, so I add it here for reference-purposes only:
https://www.magniclight.com/index.ph...4-crowdfunding
01-14-17, 10:52 PM
#295
Jet Jockey
I've been eyeballing this project for a while. Did NOT contribute to the KS campaign, because I had grave doubts. Ti at that price is hard to do for a big manufacturer. This guy is a startup, and even if his folding idea works, I have doubts about his ability to machine and weld the thing in Ti.
That being said, I want it to work. It looks great, and I would love a good alternative to Brompton. Something that has as elegant a fold, but not all the weird and quirky one-off parts.
That being said, I want it to work. It looks great, and I would love a good alternative to Brompton. Something that has as elegant a fold, but not all the weird and quirky one-off parts.
01-22-17, 08:01 PM
#298
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I understand the latest update to backers last week has a high level timeline showing production readiness running through to March, production commencing in April with delivery to backers running from May through July.
A more detailed update was promised for this week.
This just about supports the continued forecast of pre-order deliveries in July.
01-23-17, 10:01 PM
#300
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At first that's what I thought tonight, as well, and I laughed and said goodbye, Helix. But then I realized May 1 is when the BALANCE is required; they are now accepting 50% deposits although I did not get the promised email today announcing that. What to do, what to do...
Mike
Mike