Kintsugi automates sales tax and VAT compliance. It does not cover every tax, every platform, or every scheme, and knowing where the edges are saves you from finding out at a deadline. This article is the single place where those edges are written down.
Kintsugi covers sales tax, use tax, and VAT. Other tax types are outside its scope
Kintsugi calculates and files tax. It does not give tax advice for your specific situation
Read-only integrations report tax. Only tax-engine integrations calculate tax at checkout
Some jurisdictions, integrations, and features require a specific plan or manual enablement by our team
Kintsugi does not write data back to your platform except through a tax-engine integration
Kintsugi is responsible for your sales tax compliance and nothing beyond it.
Tax type | Covered by Kintsugi |
|---|---|
Sales tax and use tax | Yes |
VAT, GST, and HST | Yes, in supported countries |
Franchise tax | No |
Corporate or personal income tax | No |
Payroll or employment tax | No |
Property tax | No |
Excise tax | No |
Gross receipts tax | Only where it functions as the jurisdiction's sales tax, such as New Mexico GRT |
Registering for sales tax in a state can enroll you in other taxes administered by the same agency, which is why you may receive a notice for a tax Kintsugi did not register you for. Those filings remain yours. See Why You May Receive Notices for Taxes Kintsugi Didn't Register You For.
Kintsugi calculates input VAT on EU and UK purchases you upload. Recoverable input VAT is netted against the VAT you owe for that period, and anything left over is carried forward as an Input VAT Credit. See How to Upload Purchase Transactions in Kintsugi
Outside the EU and UK, Kintsugi does not calculate input VAT or input tax credit, including Canadian Input Tax Credits. You can enter the amount yourself if you want it reflected
Kintsugi does not calculate refund claims for VAT paid in a country where you are not registered, and it does not handle the multi-year adjustment that applies when a capital asset's use changes after its original VAT deduction
Kintsugi does not calculate late-registration, late-filing, or late-payment penalties and interest
Kintsugi calculates on standard VAT accounting. Special schemes, including Flat Rate, Cash Accounting, Annual Accounting, and the retail schemes, change how VAT is calculated and are not supported
Northern Ireland goods rules are not yet in scope
Read-only integrations import your data for exposure monitoring and filing preparation. They do not calculate tax at checkout and they do not set tax on invoices in your platform
Tax-engine integrations are not available on every platform.
Address changes you make in Kintsugi affect data inside Kintsugi only. They do not sync back to your source system, so fix the address in both places
Transactions you upload by CSV stay in Kintsugi. They do not sync back to your source platform
Exemptions are not available from every platform. Rillet, for example, has no exemption data to send, so you import or create exemptions in Kintsugi
QuickBooks Online is supported. QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Enterprise Desktop are not
Want to check what are the stores or platforms we currently support? See: Data Sources in Kintsugi
Kintsugi remits tax by ACH only. Credit cards are not accepted for tax remittance, both for security reasons and because ACH supports larger transaction amounts.
Kintsugi pays the tax you owe from the bank account on file under Configuration > Bank Details. It does not extend credit or front funds on your behalf.
US state remittance generally requires a US bank account and routing number.
Your Kintsugi subscription is billed separately and does not use the bank account above.
Credit and debit cards are accepted on all paid plans.
ACH bank transfer is available to customers paying from a US bank account. ACH is a US banking network, so customers outside the US pay by card.
The Free plan does not require a payment method.
Some capabilities are gated rather than absent. If something is unavailable to you, the app tells you and offers a path.
Capability | Requirement |
|---|---|
Nexus monitoring and exposure analysis | Available on every plan, including Free |
Registrations, filings, and back filings | Starter or Premium |
Analytics | Any paid plan, with the advanced experience on Premium |
Selected international jurisdictions | Premium, plus enablement by the Kintsugi team |
Input VAT on EU and UK purchases | Premium, plus EU or UK enablement by the Kintsugi team |
API access and premium connectors | Premium |
If a jurisdiction is not yet enabled for your account, you keep full visibility into your exposure there while the rest is arranged.
Kintsugi handles:
Monitoring nexus and exposure across jurisdictions
Calculating tax on synced transactions
Preparing, filing, and remitting returns in registered jurisdictions
Suggesting product categories and corrected addresses for your review
You handle:
Reviewing and approving product categorizations and address corrections
Keeping your own invoices and records for the periods each jurisdiction requires
Filing tax types outside Kintsugi's scope
Deciding, with a tax advisor where the answer is genuinely unclear, how your business should be treated
This article states scope limits at the platform level. It does not list every platform-specific quirk, since those live in each platform's own article, and it does not list jurisdiction-level taxability rules, which live in the per-country and per-state references. For a limitation specific to one integration, start with that platform's guide.
Q: What are Kintsugi's drawbacks?
A: The honest answer is scope. Kintsugi is deliberately a sales tax and VAT platform, so it does not touch income tax, franchise tax, or payroll tax. It also does not give tax advice, it remits by ACH only, and a read-only integration reports tax rather than collecting it. Everything above is listed on this page rather than discovered later.
Q: What does Kintsugi not support?
A: See the tables above. The most common answers are non-sales tax types, VAT special schemes, input tax credit, penalty and interest calculation, credit card remittance, and QuickBooks Desktop.
Q: Is Kintsugi tax advice?
A: No. Kintsugi is software that automates compliance, supported by tax professionals. Articles here are general information about how the product works, not advice about your specific situation.
Q: Can I use Kintsugi if my platform is not supported?
A: Yes. Upload your transactions as a file from Data Sources using the provided CSV template.
Q: Does Kintsugi guarantee I will never receive a notice?
A: No. States send notices for many reasons, including tax types outside Kintsugi's scope. Kintsugi Mail triages the mail and responds to notices that fall within sales tax compliance.
Q: Why does my read-only integration not charge tax to my customers?
A: Because that is what read-only means. To calculate and collect tax at checkout, you need a tax-engine integration, or you enable tax collection in the platform itself.
For further concerns, we're always here to help. If you can't find the answer you're looking for, just reach out to us using the chat in the bottom right corner of your screen.