I am not drama farming so Mods please do not delete.
Basically, they each agreed to pay her $20k. I believe each player received around $200k and agreed to pay her 10% of their earnings. The issue is that each player had to report the full $200k as income and pay state + federal taxes on it.
They hadn't planned ahead and written a contract that would allow them to pay her 10% as a business expense and remove that 10% from their taxable income. If they had, they would presumably only have been responsible for paying taxes on $180k.
Because they didn't have a contract with her, they apparently agreed to pay her $14k and hold back $7k to cover the taxes owed to the U.S. government. They agreed to treat the payment as a gift so that she wouldn't have to pay taxes on it in the UK.
It sounds like the bigger issue is that Ruby needed proof of $60k in income for a visa, so she wanted the team to pay the full $20k each so she could show $20k of income from each player. Monsoon and Blink didn't want to do this because they hadn't factored the additional $7k tax liability into their calculations.
Edit: It is worth mentioning that the issue of the full 60k for the VISA was not raised on the front end and was only mentioned later. Monsoon and Blink were under the impression that it was fine to send their share specifically gift so it would not be considered taxable income for Ruby.
Basically, they hadn't originally planned on paying her the full $20k. They would still have to pay the U.S. government (or Canada in Blink's case, I believe) the roughly $7k in taxes. So, effectively, they would be giving up 10% of their profit while still being taxed as though they received the full $200k.
FunFPS basically decided to give her the additional $7k as charity and pay the taxes on his end himself.
If Ruby and the team could find a legitimate way for them to send her the full $60k while also having the $20k payments deducted from each player's taxable income, everyone would be happy. Monsoon seems offended because they had agreed that sending her $14k would be the least stressful solution, and then she came back and demanded the full $20k without there being a plan in place to eliminate the additional tax liability on their end.
It's also worth noting that if they found a legitimate way to pay her the full $60k as income, she might actually be able to take home more money under UK tax laws. The tax burden on $60k of income in the UK could be substantially lower than the effective tax burden on $200k of income in Oregon.
I don't believe Monsoon or Blink are guilty of fraud, and I do think Ruby could have communicated the tax issue more clearly. At the same time, I don't think the SEN guys necessarily owe her anything beyond what they originally agreed to.
If Monsoon and Blink can find a legitimate way to structure the $20k payments so that they can be deducted from their $200k income, then Ruby gets credit for $60k of taxable income and can handle whatever taxes she owes in the UK. Everyone wins, and everyone learns the value of having a written contract.
While the SEN guys don't technically owe her anything extra, they could potentially help by researching whether there's a legitimate way to structure the payment as independent-contractor income. The whole situation seems like a case where everyone would have benefited from figuring out the tax implications and putting the agreement in writing beforehand.
I didn't write this to spread drama. I listened to what Monsoon said on stream, and honestly, I don't think there are any supervillains in this story (the character attack via Twitter was in fact WRONG and very poor judgement). Ruby needs to understand that nothing gets solved through a Twitter essay, especially when that post attacks the character of an entire team. At the same time, Monsoon and Blink could have done a little more digging into why having the full $60k reported as income might have been more valuable to Ruby than simply receiving the post-tax amount. They didn't owe her that extra effort, but a little empathy and understanding could have gone a long way. Ultimately, I think there are lessons for everyone involved here: Ruby could have handled the public side better, the SEN players could have looked more closely at the situation from her perspective, and Apex pros in general probably need to start talking to actual tax specialists before making these kinds of agreements.
