Tax for software platforms
Learn how to enable Stripe Tax for your connected accounts, and collect tax when the connected account is liable for paying the tax.
Stripe Tax enables businesses to calculate, collect, and report indirect taxes in over 100 countries, across hundreds of product categories. As a platform, you can use Stripe tax to offer pre-integrated tax compliance to your connected accounts.
Use this guide if your connected accounts are responsible for collecting, filing, and reporting taxes.
Set up your connected accounts for tax
As a platform, you must make sure that a connected account has their tax settings and registrations set up before enabling tax calculations. This can be achieved by:
Connected account using the Stripe Dashboard
Creating a tax interface within your platform
Using Connect embedded components within your platform
Your platform must then check whether connected accounts have configured Stripe Tax to enable tax calculations.
Verify tax settings for a connected account
Before setting automatic_tax[enabled]: true on a payment, verify that the connected account’s tax settings are active. If a connected account hasn’t completed their tax setup (head office location, preset tax code, and at least one registration), enabling automatic_tax results in errors or zero-tax calculations. Use the Tax Settings API to confirm the account’s status is active before enabling automatic tax on their payments.
You can check the status of your connected accounts directly from this page.
Note
Sign in to check if your connected accounts are ready to use Stripe Tax.
On the Connected accounts page in your Dashboard, you can filter the list on accounts that are ready to use Stripe Tax. You can also export those accounts with the following Stripe Tax-related columns:
- Tax Settings Status : the value active indicates that the account is ready to use Stripe Tax. The value pending indicates that some required fields are missing .
- Tax Threshold Status : the value exceeded indicates that the account’s calculated sales or transactions are over the location’s threshold, and the business likely needs to register for tax. For more information, see Monitor your obligations .
- Tax Registration Status : the value active indicates that the account has at least one active tax registration .
You can also check whether an account has configured Stripe Tax by using the Tax Settings API.
Assign tax codes to the product catalog Optional
To calculate taxes, Stripe Tax requires classifying products into their tax codes. One way to do this is to supply a preset tax code for each connected account, which is probably sufficient if your connected accounts typically sell a single category of items.
However, you might offer your users more control by allowing them to map Tax Codes to each product. You can retrieve a list of supported product tax codes from the Stripe Tax Code API. You can also allow a subset of this list if your connected accounts only sell specific types of products.
Integrate tax calculation and collection
You need to integrate with Stripe Tax to calculate taxes as part of your checkout flow.
Payment Links
Payment Links for one-time payments
Payment Links for subscriptions
Checkout
Checkout Sessions for one-time payments
Checkout Sessions for subscriptions
Billing
Subscriptions
Invoicing
Custom flows (Payment Intents, non-Stripe gateways)
Custom flows use the Stripe Tax Calculation API directly – for example, to calculate taxes for Payment Intents, or to preview taxes on product pages or checkout carts before a payment is created. This is also the correct workflow if you use a payment gateway other than Stripe and only need Stripe for tax calculation.
Payment Intents
Off-Stripe payments
After you implement it, Stripe automatically starts collecting tax in jurisdictions where the user has an active registration.
Note
Independent of the integration, your connected account receives a credit for the collected tax amount by default.
Optional Resolve common errors
Access Stripe Tax Reports
Your connected accounts can use Stripe Tax reports to help them correctly file and remit tax.