This isn't something that is CG-specific, but, since this is a community of creative professionals with multi-media experience, I thought I would try asking here for advice.
I don't want to prevent impoverished people and people from places in the world without a competitive market-economy from have equitable access to creative products I sell. Five, if you already accept discounts for students and veterans and etc, then there's even less reason not to accept other forms of bracketed discounts.
One possible starting point is to allow discounts based on people's income levels. But not only that, what qualifies as the "poverty-line" depends on the country they reside in.
Needless to say, I don't want to be personally responsible for people's tax information, therefore, it's best I use a verified third-party software that people can verify their status with. But, I've never heard of such software before, does anyone know how they would verify income to offer discounts?
I have never heard of anything like that, but neither has that been a strategy I can say I commonly hear. I guess people just offer discounts not based on personal information such as income, just on dates like Black Friday or Christmas and stuff like that. Also if you're a student is a common thing to have discount for. But based on how wealthy you are, sounds like the things that get people fired up politically. Like I have to pay more taxes than you because I make more than you? We need a tax cut for the right now! Revolution!. I guess the sentiment is good, it's to help people out that can't afford something, but sounds very tricky when it comes to implementation in the real world.
I've thought about what you've brought up in the past. I'm not starting my own forums, and two, we can stack multi-faceted discounts to attenuate to more types of people and three, most people interested (designers, students, business people) aren't going to waste their time trying to argue during their work hours. Four, paying based on success is already how royalties and stock options for employees work, so if you already accept stocks and royalties as an economic concept, there's no reason to reject bracketed income models too. And, if you already accept discounts for students, there's even less of a reason to reject the concept.
If you're the type of person who's up in arms about a few dollars, probably you're the kind of person who needs some kind of discount.
In that case, you'd probably get at least one of several possible discounts for being a sole proprietor or small agency rather than a larger business that's already vastly successful.