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My Stripe Tax Story

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Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#131

Post by cakoose »

NorwegianDude wrote: post #92
whatshisface wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't normally have to give Stripe location information for US customers. The problem happened when he enabled tax support for Canadians. Enabling tax support in Canada breaks US subscriptions... who knew. > I built out my Stripe Tax integration, made sure I had all the addresses I needed for my Canadian customers (Canada is the only jurisdiction I run my business, and therefore only need to charge tax to Canadia…

He didn't enable "Stripe Tax for Canada". He enabled Stripe Tax. The whole selling point of Stripe Tax is that it calculates tax for customers in every supported location. It needs customer location to function. He's supposed to charge tax in other locations where it's required too. Using Stripe Tax to only handle tax for customers in the home region of the company when the company also sells outside the home region…

> Using Stripe Tax to only handle tax for customers in the home region of the company when the company also sells outside the home region seems like a strange goal.

It's a common goal. When becoming compliant with sales tax laws, it makes sense to prioritize the states/countries where the business has a physical presence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_tax#Enforcement_of_tax_o...

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#132

Post by eru »

Chirael wrote: post #60
jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like something good old fashioned double-entry bookkeeping would have caught immediately (hunky dory income from Stripe seemingly falling into a black hole). No need to scrutinize every transaction until you notice the ledger isn't adding up.

It sounds like a classic example of how accrual bookkeeping can be misleading due to timing issues (the sale has already been booked even though the cash hasn’t been collected). I know it has other advantages vs. cash bookkeeping, but cash is so much easier to understand that I have always chosen it whenever possible (i.e., for a service business).

If you have the data, either form of bookkeeping should be 'just' a shift in presentation?

(I don't know whether the software used makes this easy?)

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#133

Post by VMtest »

Fr3dd1 wrote: post #110
throwaway2016a wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you let this kind of fuck-up go undetected for over three months, you have to at least assume some of the blame and acknowledge that you probably could have caught it if you scrutinized transactions. I work in eCommerce and occasionally there will be something like a script or config gets messed up and an issue with billing will happen. And being the "expert" I'm usually the one called to fix it. I wish I could…

Well, I am sorry but in my eyes this just shows bad product quality, bad transparance and missing understanding of basic business stuff on the side of the product. The only reason for software to be existing is to NOT mandate users to check stuff manually.

So software is a "guarantee" thing already that people can trust in? I wonder how many software engineers will be out of their jobs if that actually happens, we will see

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#134

Post by thathndude »

Fr3dd1 wrote: post #110
throwaway2016a wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you let this kind of fuck-up go undetected for over three months, you have to at least assume some of the blame and acknowledge that you probably could have caught it if you scrutinized transactions. I work in eCommerce and occasionally there will be something like a script or config gets messed up and an issue with billing will happen. And being the "expert" I'm usually the one called to fix it. I wish I could…

Well, I am sorry but in my eyes this just shows bad product quality, bad transparance and missing understanding of basic business stuff on the side of the product. The only reason for software to be existing is to NOT mandate users to check stuff manually.

Quickbooks takes a stab to categorize my books for me. But you better believe, while I’m no CPA, I’m in the books at least once a week making a modicum of effort to understand and work on these things.

I’m far from perfect, and that’s why the CPA comes in after me to check. But if i wait for those quarterly checks to “check in” on quickbooks, that’s on me.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#135

Post by Aeolun »

colesantiago wrote: post #52
danity wrote: post #47

Sad to see Stripe fall to the bean counters instead of staying focused on customers. They were coming out with some cool innovations a few years ago. Even "don't be evil" Google is moving in this direction. Not sure why companies always evolve this way. Boeing is another prime example. Apple has maintained its focus on the customer and thrived, bucking the trend, which seems like it would be motivation for others to…

I would only have to assume you haven't ran a business with over $2M ARR. Taxes, VAT, etc is a HUGE pain in the ass. It's been a long time for Stripe to introduce a solution for taxes after it was requested by lots of customers (and recently acquired TaxJar because of it)

Maybe the taxes in my country are simple, but it’s never been particularly onerous to me.

The US just has a convoluted tax system.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#136

Post by thathndude »

dhruvkar wrote: post #83
aaxe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he sits down at his computer every night at home, logs into the ERP system, and reviews sales and receipts Sorry, what? How is this OK or even normalized - he should not have to check every single receipt every night. You hire people to do that, and if they cannot do it right, you hire someone else. As OP mentioned, it wasn't a gradual thing, and when you have a lot of customers, it can easily slip through. Even yo…

Similar situation as OP. My dad started the business (his 3rd overall) 22 years ago and it's been growing steadily since. My dad still does daily scans of our ERP. I run the business with him and we have 40 employees, and I too have had similar conversations with him. While I'm sure there is a better way to do this (e.g. invest in BI, hire and train a person to do this etc.), the fact of the matter is no one else is…

I think your mentality is right (as a small business owner myself).

However, to push back a bit, I think sometimes it’s easy to believe that we’re the only ones who can do something because we’re the only ones who have lived and breathe it for 5+ (Pick your number) years. And one might be surprised if they actually tried outsourcing how competent some folks can be.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#137

Post by thathndude »

Aside from a Stripe rep estimating a response in 12-24 hours, and then taking 3 days to give out a canned response, it seems like Stripe hasn’t don’t anything wrong.

This potential issue was flagged in the documentation.

I don’t want to “blame the victim,” but I don’t see Stripe As particularly culpable here.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#139

Post by sam0x17 »

maxwelldone wrote: post #123
Aeolun wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I discovered in actually using them has made me realize how much effort they put in to marketing to developers I think the problem is. When I used them like 5-6 years ago, their offering was absolutely legendary. So much so that I happily moved over from 1.5% fees on Authorize to 3% on Stripe. Right now? It’s basically become everything it seemed to be fighting against in the past.

What's a good alternative these days? Especially in NA.

If you want something barebones with the smallest possible transaction fees and a good API, Helcim was quite good at least a few years ago when I used it. This was for a project that did a lot of micro-charges and they were the only payment processor I could find where that would still be profitable because of their (then) low fees. Not sure what their fee structure is now, though.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#140

Post by graderjs »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #49
chrissnell wrote: post #41

My dad owns a successful chain of bicycle stores in Texas. He’s been in business for almost 51 years and he’s one of the largest bike dealers by volume in the country. He has nearly a hundred employees and a bookkeeper. Despite having a proverbial dozen balls in the air at any time and despite having people on the payroll to do bookkeeping, he sits down at his computer every night at home, logs into the ERP system, a…

> if you let this kind of fuck-up go undetected for over three months, you have to at least assume some of the blame and acknowledge that you probably could have caught it if you scrutinized transactions. I work in eCommerce and occasionally there will be something like a script or config gets messed up and an issue with billing will happen. And being the "expert" I'm usually the one called to fix it. I wish I could…

It's funny that, with the importance of tax to government revenue, why do governments not make a habit of funding/creating really high quality tax software for businesses/individuals to use? Increases in collection efficiency have historically been associated with growth of the state coffers (and state's whose bureacracies failed to adequately capture tax had to resort to funding themselves in other ways, frequently in the past through "expansionist tendencies", ie, war--for territory, resources etc...which then only works if you can pay for soldiers and equipment). Not that governments seem great at making software (in general), but with something so critical, a focus on this seems like a "sort of" low-hanging fruit...
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