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What you need to know about Taxes as a Video Course Creator

Many video course platforms put the burden of handling taxes, invoicing, etc., on the creators. Indie Courses does this differently. There are two important pieces you need to care about, and we handle them both for you:

Sales Tax / VAT / GST

We handle the sales tax for you. We act as the seller of your video course, collect the correct taxes on every sale, and remit them to the country of the buyer. You don’t have to worry about it. We use Stripe Tax for this. We operate like a Merchant of Record (MoR) but with a simplified product catalog (only video courses). That makes it easy for us to collect and remit taxes for you.

Your Taxes

When you make a profit with your video course, you most likely need to pay taxes on it. Which taxes you have to pay depends on your country and your personal situation. However, here are the two taxes we see being applied most often.

This is not financial or accounting advice. It is only a suggestion on which topics you could start your research. Please speak to an accountant in your country instead.

Personal Income Tax

If you sell your video course as an individual and it is not your primary income, you can often file your profits as “other income” on your personal tax report. This makes it easy for you because you have to sum up your earnings only once a year, and the tax authority will calculate how much taxes you have to pay. Please speak to your accountant about whether this applies to you.

Business Revenue Tax

If you sell your video course as a business, you can often treat your earnings from video courses as regular business revenue. Usually, the same regulations apply to your video course earnings as to your other business income. Please speak to your accountant about whether this applies to you.

Reverse Invoicing

If you’re selling your video course as a business, you might need an invoice for the profit that we send your way. The standard solution for this problem is “reverse invoicing” or “reverse billing”. Many MoRs provide you with such an invoice whenever they pay out your profit.

With reverse invoicing, the MoR invoices themselves on your behalf over the exact amount they send you. Usually, the VAT on these invoices is 0% because it’s an international business transaction. That way, you will have an invoice for every amount you receive, which will make your accountant happy.

Reverse Invoicing is not available just yet. We’re working on it. It will be available soon.

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