[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do you handle VAT / Sales Tax accounting...
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Ask HN: How do you handle VAT / Sales Tax accounting as B2C SaaS?
Hey! I run a B2C SaaS and I use Stripe for all of my sales
(subscriptions). I am looking to learn how others handle their VAT
/ Sales Tax filing. I know that the standard answer would be to
use Paddle / LemonSqueezy / Polar.sh, but I already have a lot of
subscribers on Stripe which makes quick migration non-trivial. I
am especially looking for some reliable accounting companies /
accountants that can register and file Sales Tax across US, UK,
Canada, Australia, etc. (It does not have to be a global solution).
It's my understanding that solutions like Stripe Tax, Alavara,
Quaderno, etc. only help collect the necessary data (which I
consider the easier part, at least for digital goods), but do not
handle the registration & filing (though I've learned that Quaderno
will support filing Sales Tax in the US on your behalf soon). ---
Some jurisdictions are relatively easy to handle (for example, one
can handle whole EU by uploading a simple CSV [1] once a quarter
and the CSV is easy to generate from Stripe's records). But
unfortunately there are tons of others that are much more
complicated and scattered -- for example, due to the economic nexus
laws in the US, I now have to file Sales Tax in each individual
state where I am over the threshold (and many states have
thresholds in low hundreds of transactions, so it's not hard to
reach). [1]:
https://www.elster.de/bportal/helpGlobal?themaGlobal=osseust_import
[2]: If you do not feel comfortable commenting here, you can also
reach out at z2qmk@pekoi.com (temporary email)
Author : throw_1VJ51pMb
Score : 10 points
Date : 2025-03-08 08:57 UTC (3 days ago)
| andsoitis wrote:
| Sounds like you need an accountant.
| throw_1VJ51pMb wrote:
| That's exactly I am looking for. But I had some less than ideal
| experiences before, so I thought it might be a good idea to try
| to crowd-source some vetted options.
|
| It's also unlikely that a single accountant will be comfortable
| filing taxes in all of the jurisdictions (or maybe I will be
| pleasantly surprised).
| matt-p wrote:
| There are people like paddle who handle all this for you, but
| it's not free.
|
| Before I've just decided to restrict purchases to jurisdictions I
| can easily handle which isn't great but..
| imarkphillips wrote:
| What a big question. With so many new sales taxes hitting rhe
| world its now a nightmare for us global companies, especially in
| the digital services and the travel industry.
|
| We employ our own bookkeepers (in Africa) who operate a range of
| accounting systems for each company in the group (5 countries).
|
| As CEO I tend to do the teaching and review but the team does the
| lodgement. (I am an Australian Chartered Accountant and former
| tax agent so get the rules fairly easily).
|
| Most lodgements are online. The US is the exception. We also find
| there are free services for lodging electronically.
|
| A lot of the accounting systems are way overpriced so we don't
| use many of their up market solutions.
|
| We have built our own invoicing and Billing system this week with
| AI so expect we'll create more of our own apps over the coming
| year.
|
| My bookkeeping team has some spare capacity so let me know if we
| can maybe help you out.
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(page generated 2025-03-11 23:00 UTC)