Does anyone know if this is just the implementation that came with Stripe's purchase of TaxJar? Because perhaps they just bought something that was working and when they merged it with the rest of their operations and expanded into Canada certain bugs became more apparent??
My Stripe Tax Story
271–280 of 299 posts
Re: My Stripe Tax Story
#272An aside: It’s so absurd that someone should have to collect tax on behalf of a jurisdiction they aren’t even in. One the worst outcomes of Amazon reaching critical mass was their making agreements with various states and countries, making the tax collection moat wider and wider.
Yeah, it's a huge distraction from your core business. I work at a company that tries to take care of it for you: https://anrok.com
I suspect (hope) that in a few years most billing/payment systems will take care of this for you (either natively or through a seamless partnership) so you just fill out a few forms and forget about it.
Re: My Stripe Tax Story
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just the “TurboTax” lobby, but also a strong contingent of anti-tax conservatives. One of their approaches to gain sympathy to their cause is to keep making taxes hard. If taxes are hard, the general population will want less of them.
>One of their approaches to gain sympathy to their cause is to keep making taxes hard I'm not sure where you get this from. People on the right have been yelling about simplifying the tax code for a long time. Flat tax, "postcard-sized tax form," national sales tax, all kinds of ideas have been floated. Even eliminating the income tax altogether and going back to funding the government through tariffs, those the peop…
Straight from the horses mouth. Grover Nordquist and other anti-tax conservatives have been staunchly against allowing the IRS to do any sort of tax prep for the public for fear that will somehow lead to more taxes (ignoring the fact the IRS doesn’t create tax policy out of thin air).
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/grover-norquist-taxes_b_30056...
Re: My Stripe Tax Story
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Government made software… I imagine yearly or bi-yearly updates, horrendous UI/UX, count me out.
That’s honestly only a small part of why I would never want this. More significant, for me, is that this TaxSoftware.gov idea would mean literally thousands more employees on the government payroll, being ineffectual, slow, and bureaucratic. And when their government career is finally over, those people will all take home government pensions, as will their future replacements. Once you create more government, it will never end and will never go away.
“The only thing government is good at is creating more government.” - P.J. O’Rourke
Re: My Stripe Tax Story
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?)
Yes, a lot of software can toggle between them via a trivial UI toggle
Thanks!
Btw, you could also fit this into the conceptual framework of accrual accounting, if you modelled counterparty risk.
Re: My Stripe Tax Story
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just the “TurboTax” lobby, but also a strong contingent of anti-tax conservatives. One of their approaches to gain sympathy to their cause is to keep making taxes hard. If taxes are hard, the general population will want less of them.
>One of their approaches to gain sympathy to their cause is to keep making taxes hard I'm not sure where you get this from. People on the right have been yelling about simplifying the tax code for a long time. Flat tax, "postcard-sized tax form," national sales tax, all kinds of ideas have been floated. Even eliminating the income tax altogether and going back to funding the government through tariffs, those the peop…
The only right wing proposals to "simplify" the tax code have been ridiculous proposals like the flat tax.
You know, the one where a single mom with children to feed pays the same percentage of her income as the single billionaire that wants to buy a 3rd yacht.
Look up Grover Nordquist. He has devoted his life to making sure paying taxes doesn't become too easy. And he ain't no lefty.
Re: My Stripe Tax Story
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, a lot of software can toggle between them via a trivial UI toggle
Thanks! Btw, you could also fit this into the conceptual framework of accrual accounting, if you modelled counterparty risk.
Could you? I thought accrual methods weren't allowed to think about future probabilities and had to decide on whether to recognize an event or not. I mean, if you had counterparty risk insurance, that would make sense. So I guess if you treated yourself as self insured, you would could create the same accounting treatment?
Re: My Stripe Tax Story
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks! Btw, you could also fit this into the conceptual framework of accrual accounting, if you modelled counterparty risk.
Could you? I thought accrual methods weren't allowed to think about future probabilities and had to decide on whether to recognize an event or not. I mean, if you had counterparty risk insurance, that would make sense. So I guess if you treated yourself as self insured, you would could create the same accounting treatment?
I don't know about what's legally allowed or not. (Might also depend on jurisdiction.)
From what I remember, in general you have to recognize outlays with certainty, but you have more leeway in how you treat inflows.
In general, you can also keep whatever you want in your books and run them however you like; you just have a legal obligation to also keep accounts that are in line with established standards.
You see this distinction in GAAP vs non-GAAP numbers in the US, where GAAP stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
In banking there's an obligation to model counterparty risk; but I have to assume that banks keep multiple copies of their balance sheets and accounts around:
One version for eg tax purposes, and another version for things like determining capital requirements and risk exposure; if different rules apply in the different domains.
Re: My Stripe Tax Story
#279So, this kind of sent me on an emotional rollercoaster. I empathized with both parties.
That being said, my sites have thousands of subscribers. If subscriptions were off by a cent at any point in time, things would have been red flagged, and I would have contacted them (Strip, that is). I do have a backup payment processor, and assuming both are unavailable due to negligence on the providers' end or my own, I give the users the month for free. I had to do this exactly once in 15 years.
Stripe, without a doubt, screwed up, and the writer was correct in taking them to task, however, end users should have been let off the hook. It sounds like the write wanted to back bill them for it.
You should absolutely not be tossing this at customers, I would have thanked the customer, then I would have given them several months free while I resolved the issue.
Customers should be first. I actually had to archive a site recently due to declines in my ability to update it. The customers involved weren't unhappy about my ability to keep it updated, they were unhappy that I was shutting out their ability to support the site.
Treat your customers like gold. I promise you won't regret. I had someone try to donate thousands to me to keep a site online. I declined and kept the site online and archived for free.
Re: My Stripe Tax Story
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
As it happens, I'm reading this thread while taking a break from writing tax handling in a piece of e-commerce software. It relies 100% on the settings of the application in question, because tax codes and procedures vary greatly around the world, and it's internationally used software. There are even some stores using this software that sell items to and from different countries using the same website, so it can be…
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