Global tax & invoices

Easytools is your solution for managing global sales tax and invoicing on your own – without sacrificing compliance or handing over control of your customer data to MoR. Keep reading to discover how we make it easy.

Select your ideal tax management solution

With Easytools, you have multiple options for managing taxes while selling. It’s entirely up to you to choose the solution that best fits your needs. Here’s a list of available options:

• No Tax & Invoicing (Free) – You take full responsibility for tax handling and invoice delivery.
• Easybilling ($0.50 per transaction) – Our built-in solution handles global invoicing, tax calculation, and billing for you.
• Stripe Tax (Stripe fee: 0.7% per transaction) – Use Stripe’s tax engine for automated tax calculation and invoice generation.
• External Provider – Integrate with supported third-party solutions for tax and invoicing (currently limited to transactions within Poland).

The table below breaks down each option in detail, so you can compare them easily.

As you can see, no matter which model you choose, you'll still have access to essential tax features – like setting local tax rates, validating tax IDs, and generating basic tax reports. For more details, check out this article in our documentation.

Accurate tax calculation

When calculating taxes, several factors come into play – such as where your business is registered, your customer's location, and the type of product you’re selling. These details can vary widely; you might be selling to different countries with distinct tax jurisdictions, targeting your local market, or offering various product types. All these factors significantly influence the tax rate applied at checkout.

The good news is that Easytools can manage these complexities and accurately calculate the tax rate for you. All you need to do is provide some basic information about your sales and business, such as:

• domestic tax rate - a tax rate you normally apply when selling in the country where your business is registered
• general tax category (applicable for international sales only) - the category of product that you sell; you can override this settings at the specific cart level
• registered jurisdictions - countries, where your business is registered to sales tax after passing the threshold

All those settings will be applied globally to all your carts. If you need, you can change the details locally on the checkout level, e.g. choose a different product category for a specific cart.

Thresholds monitoring and management

Some countries require immediate tax registration, while others use thresholds – meaning you only need to register once your income exceeds a set amount (usually annually). In places like the US, it gets more complex, as tax rules vary by state. For example, the most common US threshold is $100,000, but in California, it jumps to $500,000.

Manually tracking all this can be error-prone and stressful. That’s why Easytools enables you to:

• Disable countries with immediate tax obligations
• Auto-disable sales once you hit a threshold

The first option helps you avoid sales (and the need for tax registration) in countries with strict tax requirements. The second keeps you compliant in threshold-based regions where you haven't surpassed the threshold levels yet.

The best way to illustrate this is with a real-world example:

Let’s say it’s December, and you’re selling online courses. In one of the jurisdictions you are targeting, the threshold is $100,000/year. You’re at $97,000 and planning a new launch. That launch would push you over the limit, triggering tax duties.

With Easytools, you have two smart options:

• Postpone your launch to January, resetting the threshold clock.
• Temporarily disable sales in that region to stay under the limit.

Either way, you stay in control, avoid surprise tax obligations, and make launch decisions strategically – rather than reactively.

Tax details at checkout

The reality is that neither you nor your customers want to be surprised by unexpected tax costs. That’s why it's important to calculate and clearly display tax information and applicable rates right at checkout. In Easytools, you can choose to use inclusive or exclusive tax options – meaning the tax can either be included in the price or added separately. In both cases, the details of the tax costs will be shown in the checkout summary.

Let’s look at an example to see how these two tax handling models would affect your cart.

Assuming you set your product price at $29.99 for an ebook:

• Tax excluded: The calculated tax cost will be added to the base price.
• Tax included: The tax is already factored into the set price.

And here’s a comparison how both options will appear in your checkout:

The key element here is that the tax cost is clearly displayed before the customer clicks 'Purchase.' This allows them to make an informed decision, knowing exactly how much they will pay upfront. This transparency can significantly boost your conversion rates and prevent cart abandonment, as customers won’t be surprised to find that the price is 23% higher than they initially expected.

Automated billing and invoicing

If you choose our Easybilling service, we’ll take all the billing and invoicing off your hands. In addition to automatically issuing invoices for your customers, we will:

• Deliver the invoice in the purchase confirmation email.
• Add the invoice to the customer portal, allowing customers to manage all their invoices in one place.
• Enable customers to update their invoicing details independently.
• Handle any customer requests, such as returns and data change requests.

This way, you can rest easy knowing your invoicing is error-free and requires no effort on your part. Plus, you can download all issued invoices for a selected period with just one click or generate a sales report.

MoR isn't always the answer – here's why

We get it, all this can be quite overwhelming. And that's exactly so many creators hand their tax manaement over to Merchants of Record. It is indeed a safe (at least usually), and comfortable option, but it comes at come with a high price tag. - and it's not only the additional MoR fees you need to cover.

When you use an MoR, they’re technically selling your products on your behalf. And that comes with a few major downsides:

• You pay taxes you might not owe – MoRs serve thousands of sellers, so they easily surpass tax thresholds in most countries. That means you’ll be forced to charge and remit taxes even if you wouldn’t have to on your own.
• Their name, not yours, is on the invoice – Your customers are technically buying from them, not you.
• They own the customer data – Which can be a serious limitation if you ever want to switch providers or keep full control over your audience.
• Your money flows through them first – Payouts can be delayed and add unnecessary friction.

Want to dive deeper? Check out this article on why MoR might not be the right fit for you.

At Easytools, we encourage you to explore an alternative approach. We don’t act as a Merchant of Record (MoR); instead, we provide you with straightforward tools to manage taxes – both globally and locally – on your own.

This not only lowers your overall costs but also gives you complete control over your customer data without any lock-in. Everything is securely stored in YOUR Stripe account, so if you ever decide to move on, we’ll be sad to see you go, but we won’t hold you back from transferring your customer data to another tool.