How Stripe Tax works with GoCushy

Sam Bakker · July 25, 2026 · 5 min read

Tax at checkout has two halves: getting the number right at the moment of sale, and producing paperwork afterward that survives an audit. Here is exactly how both work when GoCushy runs your checkout and the money settles on your own Stripe account.

Start with who owns what

GoCushy is not a merchant of record. Every payment lands in your own Stripe account, which means the tax setup that matters is yours too: the registrations you've added in Stripe — EU VAT through OSS, UK VAT, NZ or AU GST, US state registrations — are the ones every calculation runs against. GoCushy doesn't pool tax on your behalf, doesn't stand between you and your customer, and doesn't maintain a shadow copy of tax rules. You are the seller of record; Stripe Tax is your calculator.

What happens at checkout

When a buyer reaches a GoCushy checkout, they enter their country and postcode. GoCushy passes those to Stripe Tax on your account and asks for the calculation. Stripe Tax checks the buyer's location against your registrations: if you're registered in that jurisdiction, it returns the correct rate and amount for what you're selling; if you're not registered there, no tax is added. GoCushy then shows the result as its own labelled tax line on the checkout — the buyer sees the price, the tax, and the total before they pay. At no point does GoCushy invent a rate or hard-code one. The number is Stripe's tax engine running on your account, at the moment of sale.

After the sale: a compliant invoice, in sequence

A tax invoice is more than a receipt. In most VAT and GST regimes it needs a sequential invoice number with no gaps, the seller's details, the buyer's details, and the tax broken out correctly. GoCushy generates that automatically for every sale — numbered in order, carrying the exact tax Stripe calculated, formatted the way an auditor expects to see it.

And straight into Xero

Paperwork only counts once it reaches your books. Connect Xero and each invoice files itself into Xero automatically — no CSV exports, no re-keying at the end of the month. Checkout to books, closed loop.

What stays your responsibility

This is the part most tools blur, so let's not. Stripe Tax calculates; it does not make you compliant on its own. Three things remain squarely yours:

• Registering where you have nexus. Neither GoCushy nor Stripe registers you anywhere. You (with your adviser) decide where you're required to register, and you add those registrations to your Stripe account.
• Filing returns. Stripe Tax and your GoCushy invoices give you the numbers. Filing the VAT, GST or sales-tax return — and paying what's owed — is done by you or your accountant.
• Monitoring thresholds. Registration thresholds vary by country and state. Stripe's dashboard can help you watch where you're approaching them, but deciding when to register is a judgment call for you and your adviser.

What's coming: B2B reverse charge

One honest gap: if you sell business-to-business across borders, you often shouldn't charge tax at all — the buyer accounts for it under reverse charge. Per-region tax modes with buyer tax-ID validation and the right invoice wording are coming as part of the optional Worldwide Tax & Affiliates Pack (+$95 one-time) — they are not live yet. We've written up the problem and our approach in Reverse Charge for B2B, Without the Headache. Everything else on this page — Stripe Tax at checkout, sequential invoices, Xero — works today without the Pack.

Want the wider picture of VAT and GST on your own account — EU, UK, NZ and AU worked examples included? Read Tax, Done Right on Your Own Account.

Sam Bakker is the founder of GoCushy. He has a long track record building launch and funnel software for creators, and builds from New Zealand.