4 ms·

How to solve this fucking sales tax problem with a faster Stripe integration

28 points by Octobat 11y ago

Octobat 11y ago
Since October 2014, we've been building an automatic invoicing solution for businesses throughout the European Union. After a year of customer feedback and a lot of US market demands, we have decided to simplify the payment implementation and integrate the tax calculation feature to the checkout. We aim to automate all billing without needing any developing knowledge. Are you an « early stage » startup and want to get paid faster for your product? We coded a back-office to collect payments in the easiest and fastest way possible. You just have to choose your options like your revenue model: recurring or one-off payments with coupons or marketplaces. And more specifically the details linked to this revenue model like plans, tax handling, invoicing... Then, we generate a single javascript line of code. Insert this line into your code and you’re done. You can collect payments via your checkout. Are you an expanding startup and want to solve this fucking sales tax problem? "A State is authorized to require a remote seller to collect sales and use taxes under this Act only if the remote seller has gross annual receipts in total remote sales in the United States in the preceding calendar year exceeding $1,000,000." - Source: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/698/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/698... As your business starts expanding and you start selling to multiple states within the United States or to other countries such as the European Union, this is where things get complicated because you have to collect sales tax or VAT (Value Added Tax) from all your customers which differ from state-to-state and country-to-country. Handling taxes and keeping up-to-date with them is very hard, that’s why we provide a tax API and the sales tax calculation feature directly within the checkout. We want to simplify your billing flow. We provide webhooks, API, widgets that make receipts immediately available via the billing page for your customers. Our goal is to connect to a maximum number of payment solutions and to open the checkout to third-party applications like accounting & analytics apps. Bonus: With our back-office, you can design your own checkout to fit your identity, magnifying your customers experience and increasing your conversions. In conclusion, Checkout by Octobat is pretty simple: 1- Just connect your payment gateway(s) 2- Select the options you need and style your checkout 3- Paste the single javascript line of code into your code
wbond 11y ago
The screenshots look pretty, but more details would be helpful. From my experience digging into collecting VAT for digital goods, the issue is complex to say the least. Does is handle VAT exempt areas? Are VAT IDs validated? Does it allow not collecting VAT for businesses with a validated VAT ID? Does it collect multiple pieces of location proof for consumer purchases? For EU business purchases, does it deal with the invoicing regulations surrounding invoice contents or digital signatures? Does it handle collecting sales tax based on the state of incorporation for the seller?
- Octobat 11y ago
  Hi wbond, Sure it's a big mess, and at the moment our MVP was only functional and available for Europe and Australia. We differentiate digital goods and standard services, and compute VAT rates on-the-fly according to the following location proofs: - Customer billing address - Buyer IP - Credit Card country On more than 100k transactions, we never had 3 different locations, so our algorithm is for the moment pretty accurate. We also validate VAT numbers for B2B if asked to by our customer - we let him choose if doing so or not -. We handle invoicing regulations in Europe, for instance we convert the tax amount in the local currency at the European Bank exchange rate, and print the right annotations on the document. We store the previously quoted location proofs, and are able to provide the tax administration a SAF-MOSS XML file they can require during an audit. We have plans around digital signatures, it would be through a partnership, but as it was still not requested by our customers, it's still an ongoing feature. The main issue concerning our MVP is that we relied a lot on Stripe API calls, and the way our customers implemented it. Our plan with Checkout is to determine prior to the transaction which rate has to be applied, being able to retrieve easily all the evidence we need. Doing so, we also plan to support the US/CA cases, that are also tricky; and we will be able to help businesses collecting payments, being fully compliant without having to develop a backend.
Octobat 11y ago
Hi wbond, Sure it's a big mess, and at the moment our MVP was only functional and available for Europe and Australia. We differentiate digital goods and standard services, and compute VAT rates on-the-fly according to the following location proofs: - Customer billing address - Buyer IP - Credit Card country On more than 100k transactions, we never had 3 different locations, so our algorithm is for the moment pretty accurate. We also validate VAT numbers for B2B if asked to by our customer - we let him choose if doing so or not -. We handle invoicing regulations in Europe, for instance we convert the tax amount in the local currency at the European Bank exchange rate, and print the right annotations on the document. We store the previously quoted location proofs, and are able to provide the tax administration a SAF-MOSS XML file they can require during an audit. We have plans around digital signatures, it would be through a partnership, but as it was still not requested by our customers, it's still an ongoing feature. The main issue concerning our MVP is that we relied a lot on Stripe API calls, and the way our customers implemented it. Our plan with Checkout is to determine prior to the transaction which rate has to be applied, being able to retrieve easily all the evidence we need. Doing so, we also plan to support the US/CA cases, that are also tricky; and we will be able to help businesses collecting payments, being fully compliant without having to develop a backend.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
geekztv 11y ago
Looks like an amazing solution ! Thanks a lot for sharing.
- Octobat 11y ago
  Thanks :-)
leobi 11y ago
You don't talk about pour business model. How much do you charge ? And by the way what is universal and dynamic pricing? I have an online magazine and I want to sell subscriptions as well as access to single articles. Than
- Octobat 11y ago
  Hi Leobi, At the moment it's a pay-as-you-go model with decreasing price per transaction - we only charge on successful ones-. The starting price is 30cts/transaction, and decreasing to reach 5cts/transaction on higher volumes. We will probably keep this, but introduce monthly/yearly plans. Probably $19/m for starter, then 49, 99, 199... Still need to fix the thresholds. We already and always have two interesting things for test, starters, or very small businesses: - An unlimited testmode. - 10 monthly transactions for free. Forever. What we mean by universal/dynamic pricing is: - Universal pricing is when you sell a product at a fixed tax-included price. For instance, you can sell an article at $10. Tax is then deduced - if applicable - and you obtain your net price. - Dynamic pricing is when you'd like to have a fixed net price. For instance, you sell a monthly plan: $10 + Tax - if applicable -. Let's take an example: As a French company selling digital goods, * If my customer is an French VAT registered company, the final price would be $12 - VAT 20%-. * If my customer is an Italian consumer, the final price would be $12.2 -VAT: 22%- * If my customer is a German consumer, it would be: $11.9 - VAT: 19%-. Best,

28 points by Octobat 11y ago

Since October 2014, we've been building an automatic invoicing solution for businesses throughout the European Union. After a year of customer feedback and a lot of US market demands, we have decided to simplify the payment implementation and integrate the tax calculation feature to the checkout. We aim to automate all billing without needing any developing knowledge. Are you an « early stage » startup and want to get paid faster for your product? We coded a back-office to collect payments in the easiest and fastest way possible. You just have to choose your options like your revenue model: recurring or one-off payments with coupons or marketplaces. And more specifically the details linked to this revenue model like plans, tax handling, invoicing... Then, we generate a single javascript line of code. Insert this line into your code and you’re done. You can collect payments via your checkout. Are you an expanding startup and want to solve this fucking sales tax problem? "A State is authorized to require a remote seller to collect sales and use taxes under this Act only if the remote seller has gross annual receipts in total remote sales in the United States in the preceding calendar year exceeding $1,000,000." - Source: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/698/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/698... As your business starts expanding and you start selling to multiple states within the United States or to other countries such as the European Union, this is where things get complicated because you have to collect sales tax or VAT (Value Added Tax) from all your customers which differ from state-to-state and country-to-country. Handling taxes and keeping up-to-date with them is very hard, that’s why we provide a tax API and the sales tax calculation feature directly within the checkout. We want to simplify your billing flow. We provide webhooks, API, widgets that make receipts immediately available via the billing page for your customers. Our goal is to connect to a maximum number of payment solutions and to open the checkout to third-party applications like accounting & analytics apps. Bonus: With our back-office, you can design your own checkout to fit your identity, magnifying your customers experience and increasing your conversions. In conclusion, Checkout by Octobat is pretty simple: 1- Just connect your payment gateway(s) 2- Select the options you need and style your checkout 3- Paste the single javascript line of code into your code

wbond 11y ago

The screenshots look pretty, but more details would be helpful. From my experience digging into collecting VAT for digital goods, the issue is complex to say the least. Does is handle VAT exempt areas? Are VAT IDs validated? Does it allow not collecting VAT for businesses with a validated VAT ID? Does it collect multiple pieces of location proof for consumer purchases? For EU business purchases, does it deal with the invoicing regulations surrounding invoice contents or digital signatures? Does it handle collecting sales tax based on the state of incorporation for the seller?

Octobat 11y ago
Hi wbond, Sure it's a big mess, and at the moment our MVP was only functional and available for Europe and Australia. We differentiate digital goods and standard services, and compute VAT rates on-the-fly according to the following location proofs: - Customer billing address - Buyer IP - Credit Card country On more than 100k transactions, we never had 3 different locations, so our algorithm is for the moment pretty accurate. We also validate VAT numbers for B2B if asked to by our customer - we let him choose if doing so or not -. We handle invoicing regulations in Europe, for instance we convert the tax amount in the local currency at the European Bank exchange rate, and print the right annotations on the document. We store the previously quoted location proofs, and are able to provide the tax administration a SAF-MOSS XML file they can require during an audit. We have plans around digital signatures, it would be through a partnership, but as it was still not requested by our customers, it's still an ongoing feature. The main issue concerning our MVP is that we relied a lot on Stripe API calls, and the way our customers implemented it. Our plan with Checkout is to determine prior to the transaction which rate has to be applied, being able to retrieve easily all the evidence we need. Doing so, we also plan to support the US/CA cases, that are also tricky; and we will be able to help businesses collecting payments, being fully compliant without having to develop a backend.

Octobat 11y ago

Hi wbond, Sure it's a big mess, and at the moment our MVP was only functional and available for Europe and Australia. We differentiate digital goods and standard services, and compute VAT rates on-the-fly according to the following location proofs: - Customer billing address - Buyer IP - Credit Card country On more than 100k transactions, we never had 3 different locations, so our algorithm is for the moment pretty accurate. We also validate VAT numbers for B2B if asked to by our customer - we let him choose if doing so or not -. We handle invoicing regulations in Europe, for instance we convert the tax amount in the local currency at the European Bank exchange rate, and print the right annotations on the document. We store the previously quoted location proofs, and are able to provide the tax administration a SAF-MOSS XML file they can require during an audit. We have plans around digital signatures, it would be through a partnership, but as it was still not requested by our customers, it's still an ongoing feature. The main issue concerning our MVP is that we relied a lot on Stripe API calls, and the way our customers implemented it. Our plan with Checkout is to determine prior to the transaction which rate has to be applied, being able to retrieve easily all the evidence we need. Doing so, we also plan to support the US/CA cases, that are also tricky; and we will be able to help businesses collecting payments, being fully compliant without having to develop a backend.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

geekztv 11y ago

Looks like an amazing solution ! Thanks a lot for sharing.

Octobat 11y ago
Thanks :-)

leobi 11y ago

You don't talk about pour business model. How much do you charge ? And by the way what is universal and dynamic pricing? I have an online magazine and I want to sell subscriptions as well as access to single articles. Than

Octobat 11y ago
Hi Leobi, At the moment it's a pay-as-you-go model with decreasing price per transaction - we only charge on successful ones-. The starting price is 30cts/transaction, and decreasing to reach 5cts/transaction on higher volumes. We will probably keep this, but introduce monthly/yearly plans. Probably $19/m for starter, then 49, 99, 199... Still need to fix the thresholds. We already and always have two interesting things for test, starters, or very small businesses: - An unlimited testmode. - 10 monthly transactions for free. Forever. What we mean by universal/dynamic pricing is: - Universal pricing is when you sell a product at a fixed tax-included price. For instance, you can sell an article at $10. Tax is then deduced - if applicable - and you obtain your net price. - Dynamic pricing is when you'd like to have a fixed net price. For instance, you sell a monthly plan: $10 + Tax - if applicable -. Let's take an example: As a French company selling digital goods, * If my customer is an French VAT registered company, the final price would be $12 - VAT 20%-. * If my customer is an Italian consumer, the final price would be $12.2 -VAT: 22%- * If my customer is a German consumer, it would be: $11.9 - VAT: 19%-. Best,