Ask HN: Why isn't Apple, Google, and Facebook's 30% tax illegal price fixing?

1 point

12 years ago

I've wondered for a few years why we don't see the standard 30% developer tax change like you might expect in a competitive market, and I'm hearing this question echoed by more and more developers. I am not accusing any of these companies of colluding to fix the fee, but I am interested to hear from someone with more insight whether this can be considered a form of price fixing.

Obviously, they know there's really nowhere else for third party developers to go (good luck building a competing platform), so as long as they keep their prices equal they could push that tax as high as they want. Weren't antitrust laws designed to address oligopoly situations such as this?

In a similar story, Visa and Mastercard recently settled for $7.25 billion in a class-action lawsuit related to illegally fixing their processing fees:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/13/us-creditcards-settlement-interchange-idUSBRE86C16H20120713

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