The Ledger
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Jeff Roberts: $500M acquirers routinely ignore a startup's missing global tax compliance
“I talked to a founder Who sold a business for between five hundred million and a billion dollars. So a big acquisition to a publicly traded company. They just disclosed during the acquisition that they had never paid global sales tax, and they didn't know how …”
Jeff Roberts: No good global SaaS sales tax solution exists today
“The conclusion that I've come to after spending so much time thinking about this is there really isn't a good solution to this problem today. So it's kind of a pick your poison scenario.”
Jeff Roberts: SaaS founders should ignore sales tax until $1M ARR
“I think that you really don't need to worry about this, particularly on your way to 10 K in MRR. I think it's much like all other aspects of building a startup. You need to sort of create good problems. And I would turn my attention to this personally, probabl…”
Roberts: Full Global Tax Compliance Is an Unrealistic Goal
“And even the companies that do this full time, like that's what their products are based around. The idea that you would ever be fully in compliant at any point in time is sort of a ridiculous notion in and of itself.”
Jeff Roberts: Flat remittance costs make 10% Merchant of Record fees uneconomical
“The cost of remitting these taxes doesn't scale up dramatically, and that's why I'm uncomfortable saying I'm going to pay seven or 10% or whatever it might be in perpetuity on every single recurring transaction.”
Roberts: Most SaaS businesses will likely continue using Stripe
“I think most SaaS businesses will probably opt towards continuing to use Stripe.”
Jeff Roberts predicts Stripe will eventually launch a Merchant of Record solution
“And I think it's even telling that Stripe has not prioritized their own merchant of record solution, at least at this point. I suspect they will at some point.”
Roberts: Third-Party MoRs Cause Customer Confusion on Bank Statements
“If a customer looks at their bank statement, And you are buying a product from a company that uses a third party merchant of record. They're not going to see the company's name on their bank statement. They're going to see paddle, or they're going to see gum r…”
Roberts: Stripe Tax solves sales tax tracking better than any competitor
“What I personally think is the best option and what we're going to do in the context of our own business, and also probably the first thing we'll productize for our customers, is I do think Stripe tax has solved this better than anybody else when it comes to t…”
Jeff Roberts: No founders report foreign tax enforcement for unremitted sales tax
“One of my other learnings as I've explored this topic is I was not able to find A single person who had a horror story about a foreign government coming after them for some sort of sales tax that they did not remit.”
Jeff Roberts: Over 600 US Tax Rate Changes Took Effect in 2021
“So within the United States in 20, 21, there were 600 plus Different tax rate changes that went into effect that year.”