251–260 of 383 posts
Taxes are bad. Governments absorb wealth. They don't create wealth. No government has ever created wealth.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27461853.
Ben Evans once described Stripe as tax on Internet SaaS. For a moment I’d thought it was Stripe admitting the same.
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I'm somewhat baffled by California not being a member. California's threshold below which out of state remote sellers do not have to register, collect, report, or remit sales tax is $500 000/year of sales into California. If I'm a remote seller using the free SST option to handle my taxes in the SST states, and am selling say $300 000/year in California, I will not be collecting any California tax. If they joined SST…
California is not a member of the SST because it does not currently tax a number of things that are subject to tax under the SST regime. For example, digital goods are taxable in SST states but not in California. Similarly, there are a number of other product categories where CA's taxability classifications do not match the SST's classifications. Generally, the total tax they could collect from remote (non-CA) seller…
I'd like to see Congress make it so a state can only require remote sellers with no physical presence in the state to collect tax for the state if:
1. Tax rates on remote sales are uniform within a zip code. No more having to deal with "123 Fake Street, Hooterville, 65026" having a different tax rate than "124 Fake Street, Hooterville, 65026". (Worse, I recall finding an example where a tax boundary apparently ran through an office building, so different offices on the same floor had different tax rates!).
2. They adopt a standard for tax classification that will be specified by the Federal government. They don't have to change the classifications used for taxing sellers with a presences in the state, but for remote sellers they have to use the Federal classifications.
3. Rates for remote sales can only change once per quarter, and the data for the quarter must be published one month before the start of the quarter. It must be published on the web, at a URL that requires no registration or fees, in a format specified by the Federal government. The Federal government would maintain a web page that contains links to the state data pages.
4. Sellers can report taxes using a uniform format defined by the Federal government. The format supports reports that cover the taxes for more than one state. The seller can file such a multi-state report with any state that requires remote sellers to collect tax that they owe tax to, and that state will forward the report to the other states it contains data for. The seller can also pay all the tax to that state, and it will transfer the appropriate amounts to the other states.
If Congress did this it would make dealing with remote sales tax so much easier.
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YES, considering the only best competitor in this space Paddle takes 5%. Taxes is the reason why in the past most EU/UK businesses go to Paddle. Stripe's Tax feature now saves people who were considering Paddle a lot of time now.
I thought Avalara was the leader in this space. What is their pricing, I can't find it on the site.
However, that is because you're paying for their customer support, and Avalara customer support is very good. Every issue we've had has been dealt with promptly, including issues where Avalara misfiled a return. (Long story short: they owned up to the mistake and corrected it with the state without any additional cost or penalties to us.)
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A bad ruling. To let it stand, the more reasonable interpretation is that the purchaser has to remit sales tax to their own state. But it may not stand on further challenge. For example, why should the state the items are leaving not be entitled to sales tax?
The law already was that the purchaser should remit use tax to the state for purchasers from out-of-state vendors. But compliance was basically non-existent; most people didn't even know that they owed use tax on such sales, much less what rate would apply. Sales tax is basically use tax, but with the burden of compliance placed on the seller. As for why the sellers' state is not entitled to sales tax: in the old-tim…
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A bad ruling. To let it stand, the more reasonable interpretation is that the purchaser has to remit sales tax to their own state. But it may not stand on further challenge. For example, why should the state the items are leaving not be entitled to sales tax?
The law already was that the purchaser should remit use tax to the state for purchasers from out-of-state vendors. But compliance was basically non-existent; most people didn't even know that they owed use tax on such sales, much less what rate would apply. Sales tax is basically use tax, but with the burden of compliance placed on the seller. As for why the sellers' state is not entitled to sales tax: in the old-tim…
As a business owner, I would ask myself “how is this my problem?” If a stare has a problem with residents not complying with a tax, I am not sure why a business in another state should care. If I buy a product from China, are they required to collect sales taxes for Montana? Of course not. So not sure why a business located in a sovereign US state has any obligation to follow laws of some other state in which they don’t operate. It’s the purchaser that has the relationship with their local state, not the seller.
The Wayfair decision was ridiculous. The Quill decision it overturned was the correct answer in terms of interpreting the Interstate Commerce Clause. Interestingly, Amazon and other large e-commerce companies don’t have a problem with collecting sales taxes everywhere because their compliance costs are trivial as a proportion of revenue.
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California is not a member of the SST because it does not currently tax a number of things that are subject to tax under the SST regime. For example, digital goods are taxable in SST states but not in California. Similarly, there are a number of other product categories where CA's taxability classifications do not match the SST's classifications. Generally, the total tax they could collect from remote (non-CA) seller…
The US could really use some national action on sales taxes. I'd like to see Congress make it so a state can only require remote sellers with no physical presence in the state to collect tax for the state if: 1. Tax rates on remote sales are uniform within a zip code. No more having to deal with "123 Fake Street, Hooterville, 65026" having a different tax rate than "124 Fake Street, Hooterville, 65026". (Worse, I rec…
Edit: Obvious SD v Wayfair is relevant here, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf
It's too complex to even take a stab at guessing what they'd say based on that though. Also, I'd forgotten what a wild lineup the votes were.
GINSBURG, ALITO, and GORSUCH, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., and GORSUCH, J., filed concurring opinions. ROBERTS, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined.
Edit again: Seems Roberts agrees Congress can do something:
Roberts noted that Congress has been considering whether to alter the physical-presence rule, and “nothing in today’s decision precludes Congress from continuing to seek a legislative solution. But by suddenly changing the ground rules, the Court may have waylaid Congress’s consideration of the issue.”
The majority “proceeds with an inexplicable sense of urgency,” the chief justice said, and it “breezily disregards the costs that its decision will impose on retailers.”
There are complex distinctions made in more than 10,000 taxing jurisdictions, he said.
“New Jersey knitters pay sales tax on yarn purchased for art projects, but not on yarn earmarked for sweaters,” Roberts said, while Texas imposes a sales tax on plain deodorant but not on deodorant with antiperspirant, and Illinois treats Twix and Snickers bars differently for sales-tax purposes.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/06/opinion-analysis-court-ex...
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Hey! Kelly from Stripe here: Just to clarify, there's no additional cost for using Checkout, and Radar is per small per transaction fee (or included free with Stripe if you're just starting out!), not a variable 0.5% fee.
Thanks for clarifying! That’s something I was looking at on the landing page and didn’t find that. So Checkout already includes Stripe Tax at no additional cost. That’s great to hear
I am no Stripe pricing authority, and have no relation to the company, but I'm pretty sure that is *not* what she said.
She said that Checkout does not have an additional cost on top of transactions fees, not that Tax does not have an additional cost.
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When I saw this announcement, I had fully expected these new features to be included as standard - I was a bit surprised when I saw they were charging for them. That said, I think the pricing is well worth it if you're selling B2C. EU VAT is complicated, and I presume state-level sales tax in the US is too. If you're selling B2B in the EU however, then all you really need to do it collect and validate VAT registratio…
Hey there, I believe validating VAT numbers is outside of the Stripe tax pricing and part of the Customer Tax IDs API, without any extra charge. Maybe someone from Stripe can confirm? https://stripe.com/docs/billing/customer/tax-ids And yes, if you sell only to B2B Europe and everyone inputs their VAT number you're fine (because you actually don't have to charge VAT, it's a reverse charge). Stripe tax do know this no…
Ah, good to know! It was mentioned in the same TFA, so I had thought it was chargeable with the rest of it.
> But that's actually not so common, people signing up for products usually have no idea what the VAT number of their company is.
Hmm, that hasn't been my experience, on either side of the table. As a biz owner, I get plenty orders from companies big and small, and always get a VAT ID through. When purchasing (on occasion) in my previous day job, I just had to ask someone in accounts what it was.
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How does that work when the amount of the tax depends on the location? Do your visitors need to enter their billing & shipping information before they can browse your site?
VAT is uniform across all of Germany. Therefore detailed location information isn't necessary. The country can be inferred reasonably accurately from the IP. You can have a drop-down somewhere to correct the country if necessary. ~~And I don't think there's a law that requires you to show the price including tax, but it's definitely expected.~~ I have been corrected: it is indeed required.
That would be a guess at best. A VPN or caching service (or merely inaccurate geo-IP data) could cause the site to infer the wrong location. The law linked by Vespasian doesn't appear to make any allowance for cases where the tax jurisdiction may be uncertain, though it's possible that the automated translation I read glossed over some nuance.
> You can have a drop-down somewhere to correct the country if necessary.
If the visitor neglects to select their country, and the default was incorrect, does that mean the site is not compliant with the law? The requirement was simply to show the final prices—no allowance was made, so far as I could tell, for being given inaccurate information.