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Developed by software engineers based in Dublin, Stripe Tax is set to help millions of businesses navigate the many complexities around tax collection.
Stripe Tax, a service by the payments giant that helps businesses automate the process of tax collection, is now available on platforms using Stripe Connect so that they can offer the services to their customers.
Developed by an engineering team based in the fintech’s Dublin headquarters, Stripe Tax was launched two years ago to help businesses calculate and collect various forms of taxes, including sales, value added tax (VAT), and the goods and services tax.
Connect, on the other hand, is a flagship Stripe product that allows businesses and entrepreneurs to integrate payments into their platforms or marketplaces. Thousands of platforms, such as Mindbody, Squarespace and WooCommerce, are built on Connect.
Now, the fintech giant founded by Limerick’s Collison brothers hopes Stripe Tax for platforms will help millions of businesses simply the tax process and navigate an increasingly dynamic landscape.
“Help with sales tax and VAT has been our platform users’ most commonly requested feature,” said Michael Carney, product lead for Stripe Tax. “We built Stripe Tax because it’s a logical extension of payment processing and now we’ve built Tax for platforms so platforms can offer it to their customers and help them with all aspects of the transaction lifecycle.”
The company notes that the number of businesses using Stripe Tax has tripled over the past year. This comes as Stripe reports more than 600 sales tax rule and rate changes in the US last year, as well as multiple VAT changes in the EU.
“We kept hearing from our creators that they were really struggling with taxes. They’re selling digital goods all over the country and the world. Keeping up with the different tax laws is nearly impossible,” said Peter Fitzpatrick, vice-president of commerce at Thinkific, a Stripe Tax client.
“With Stripe Tax, we’ll be able to offer a solution that automates tax calculation and collection on transactions for our creators, so they can spend less time on taxes and more time growing their business.”
One of the software engineers on the team that built the tax product is Leticia Portella, who recently spoke to SiliconRepublic.com on the many challenges of being a self-taught software developer.
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