Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stripe Tax

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 383 posts

Re: Stripe Tax

#201

Post by scubakid »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #178
scubakid wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I looked into this, it seemed to me like in the US you would need a separate license for each state you collect sales tax in (before collecting any tax)... and naturally, each state has a different licensing process, and some charge fees to register. For small independent projects, it seemed like kind of a nightmare.

You don't have to collect tax for states you don't have a presence in. They have no jurisdiction outside their borders.

I think due to South Dakota v. Wayfair, states now have more power to define what constitutes "nexus"... so there are all these special rules and thresholds now to keep track of (different for every state) that define whether you have economic nexus and need to collect sales tax there. If you hit the threshold and/or other rules apply, you're obligated to collect sales tax... but of course you can't do this until you have secured a license in that state. This was my read on the situation, but if I'm missing something definitely let me know.

Re: Stripe Tax

#202

Post by duckmysick »

drexlspivey wrote: post #77
ttoinou wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems very fair pricing compared to competitors

Why does it have to be a percentage of your revenue? It’s doing exactly the same thing for a $100 invoice and a $10000 invoice, why does the latter cost 100x more?

Value. A service Y makes it easier to collect that $10000 invoice. Inversely, by not using a service Y, you might not see those $10000 or it will be more difficult to do so.

A glass of water has more value to you when you're thirsty.

Re: Stripe Tax

#203

Post by bo1024 »

theflyinghorse wrote: post #171

The feature is of course very nice, but the pricing is steep at 0.5% of your transactions. So I'm giving away 0.5% of my revenue (provided all of my revenue comes from sales) for the privilege of having my taxes calculated? That's on top of the 2.9%+30c per transaction that I already pay stripe?

It seems like the thing that makes it steep is the percentage rather than a charge per transaction, right? Philosophically it's geared to the total value you generate rather than the value they provide to you.

Re: Stripe Tax

#204

Post by Silhouette »

pimterry wrote: post #127
outcoldman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if Paddle files taxes for you? And just send you 1099? Or it is similar to Stripe Tax, they just collect and you have to file taxes?

I use Paddle, they do file 99% of your taxes for you. In effect, they sell the product to customers, and handle all the tax on that side, for every tax regime in the world. Meanwhile you act as a company with a single B2B client and one invoice a month (covering Paddle's net sales minus 5%) instead of N invoices. They send you an email every month with your 'reverse invoice'. As accountancy goes it's extremely easy,…

How do you find working with Paddle? They've been on our shortlist for a new project and we've heard only positive things from people who actually use them. However, their terms could make any lawyer or company officer who actually read them visibly wince, and so far that has prevented us from engaging with them despite their clear advantages over the traditional payment services.

Re: Stripe Tax

#205

Post by KingMachiavelli »

tzs wrote: post #144

Note that if you are just interested in US sales taxes, and only need to collect tax in the ~1/2 of the states that are part of the Streamlines Sales Tax (SST) project, you can have your tax rate calculation, registration, reporting, and filing all done for free . The member states of SST have agreed to pay for those services from several tax SaaS companies. (There is one catch: to avail yourself of this, you must co…

Interesting. Why is CO not participating? Looks like every other state is involved to some extent.

Re: Stripe Tax

#206

Post by tzs »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #44

This is great! ATM I'm banning all EU end users from purchasing my SaaS unless they're a business because the cost of handling VATMOSS is just not worth it. It also definitely played a role in choosing to do a B2B service over a B2C one. So now the choice is: - File VAT yourself, pay 3.5% + some pennies to Stripe - Pay 5% to Paddle and they file VAT for you Definitely glad to see more competition in this area.

What makes handling VATMOSS costly for an Saas?

I deal with the software end of dealing with VAT for a small company that sells downloadable software and technical support for that software. We've not found it costly at all.

It took one guy a couple days or so to get registered with Ireland for VATMOSS.

To do the quarterly report for filing, I run a fairly simple script I wrote that produces a CSV file with one row per country giving the total sales and the total VAT we collected for that country, and someone uploads that to a form on the Irish tax authority site, which I understand is a simple and straightforward process.

To keep track of VAT rates, we use https://vatlayer.com/

Their API for getting rates is very simple, and their free plan allows 100 API calls per month. It is one call to get the rates for all VATMOSS countries.

The reporting script needs to get exchange rates to calculate the VAT in EUR for those sales where the customer paid in GBP or USD. The EU makes that information available in this handy XML document: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-hist-90d...

That contains the exchange rates between various currencies and EUR for the last 90 days. The rate you want for VATMOSS is the rate on the last business day of the quarter you are reporting for, so there is a little bit of calculation to figure out which day's rate to use.

They also have one that gives the most recent day if that better floats you boat: https:///www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.x...

If you need a specific range of dates for specific currencies, they've got that covered too. Here it is for USD and GBP: https://sdw-wsrest.ecb.europa.eu/service/data/EXR/D.GBP+USD....

Specify the range by adding query parameters startPeriod=YYYY-MM-DD and endPeriod=YYYY-MM-DD.

Re: Stripe Tax

#208

Post by exhilaration »

alibarber wrote: post #165
Ndymium wrote: post #51

I have a nano sized business to cover some server costs in Finland. Here are the EU rules as I understand them: * Selling goods - If selling to private persons in European Union fiscal territory (EUFT), add 24% (Finnish VAT). - If selling to businesses in EUFT, no VAT. - If selling to anyone outside EUFT, no VAT, but you may be liable to collect and pay VAT to the customer's country's tax authorities. - Note that the…

I understand that from the 1st of July, the electronic services section will expand to all goods, potentially with some thresholds, so you should charge the VAT rate for that particular item at the customer's home country and submit that to the Finnish tax authority (under the OSS scheme).

These are the thresholds for VAT going into effect on July 1st:

IOSS (EU) VOEC (Norway) HMRC (United Kingdom) <135 GBP

Re: Stripe Tax

#209

Post by Cerium »

tzs wrote: post #144

Note that if you are just interested in US sales taxes, and only need to collect tax in the ~1/2 of the states that are part of the Streamlines Sales Tax (SST) project, you can have your tax rate calculation, registration, reporting, and filing all done for free . The member states of SST have agreed to pay for those services from several tax SaaS companies. (There is one catch: to avail yourself of this, you must co…

Based on my personal experience I would recommend staying away from TaxCloud. When they make mistakes filing for you (and they have) the states will come to you directly with scary letters, TaxCloud won't answer your calls or messages. The only way I was able to sort things out was by getting another states small business advocate to help.

TaxCloud also has a habit of changing their fees without notice. Currently they charge an API access fee even for their "free" accounts.

Finally, they lock you in by not giving you enough information to cancel all the accounts they started for you in other states but not providing a clear way to cleanly close your account.

Re: Stripe Tax

#210

Post by ldd »

imhoguy wrote: post #200
ldd wrote: post #180

Really interesting! I have a very small video game business (emphasis on small) and I already use Stripe to handle non-EU digital purchases. I specifically avoid taking money from EU customers because I briefly looked into the tax requirements and it seemed onerous. The registration process for really small businesses that did online sales was very weird, and unlike Canada or the US, the threshold question seems to b…

If your sales is small better stay away. Find "Merchant of Record" or reseller who will cover all that mess for you. There are many: Gumroad, Paddle, FastSpring...

First time I hear about Paddle. It seems great! Thanks for the recommendation :D
Post reply on HN