VAT, GST & Sales Tax

Indirect tax is the tax charged on transactions rather than on profit. Every time you invoice a customer or receive a supplier bill, an indirect tax rule is triggered — VAT in the UK and UAE, GST in Australia and Pakistan, GST/HST/PST in Canada, and sales-and-use tax in the United States. The tax is collected by you as the seller, and remitted to the authority through periodic returns.

Get it right and it is invisible to your P&L — the tax simply passes through. Get it wrong and the errors accumulate silently for months, then arrive as a single, uncomfortable back-assessment with penalties and interest attached.

We take on the indirect tax function end-to-end: registrations in the right jurisdictions, calculation of the tax due on sales and purchases, filing the returns on the required cadence, and reconciling the position to your accounts each period so nothing drifts.

The registration question is usually the first thing that goes wrong. Founders either register too late (accumulating an unregistered liability) or register everywhere (creating filing burden that outweighs the benefit).

United Kingdom — VAT registration is compulsory when taxable turnover exceeds £90,000 in a rolling 12-month period. Voluntary registration below that threshold is worth considering when most customers are themselves VAT-registered.

United Arab Emirates — VAT registration is mandatory above AED 375,000 of taxable supplies, with voluntary registration available from AED 187,500. Federal Corporate Tax registration is separate and applies to all UAE entities.

Canada — GST/HST registration is mandatory once you exceed CAD 30,000 of worldwide taxable supplies in any four consecutive quarters. Provincial sales tax (BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec) has separate thresholds and rules.

Australia — GST registration is mandatory above AUD 75,000 of turnover (AUD 150,000 for non-profits), or from the first dollar if you provide taxi or ride-share services.

United States — there is no federal sales tax. Each state sets its own rules. Since South Dakota v. Wayfair, economic nexus can trigger a filing obligation in a state without any physical presence — commonly at $100,000 of sales or 200 transactions per year.

Pakistan — sales tax on goods is federal (FBR) at 18%; sales tax on services is provincial (PRA, SRB, KPRA, BRA). Cross-provincial services often create dual-registration questions we resolve at onboarding.

US sales tax is the single most under-managed indirect tax exposure we see, particularly for SaaS and e-commerce businesses selling into the US from abroad. Every state now enforces some form of economic nexus, and the definition of a taxable service varies dramatically — SaaS is taxable in about half the states and exempt in the rest, with grey areas in between.

We run a nexus study at onboarding: we take your sales data by state for the last 24 months, map it against each state's economic-nexus threshold, and produce a shortlist of states where you have (or are about to have) a filing obligation. From there we register you, set up automated tax calculation in your billing platform (Avalara, TaxJar or native Stripe/Shopify), and take on the monthly filings.

Where historic exposure exists, we quantify it and — where the numbers justify it — negotiate a Voluntary Disclosure Agreement with the state to cap the look-back period and waive penalties.

The UK's Making Tax Digital (MTD) regime requires VAT-registered businesses to keep digital records and file returns through MTD-compatible software. We work exclusively in MTD-compatible cloud stacks (Xero, QuickBooks Online, Zoho Books with the Bridging module where needed), and we operate as your authorised agent so we can submit directly to HMRC on your behalf.

In the UAE, all VAT and Corporate Tax returns are filed through the FTA's EmaraTax portal. We hold agent access, prepare the return from your ledger, reconcile input and output VAT to the trial balance, and file on your behalf ahead of the 28-day deadline after the tax period ends.

Cross-border VAT is where mistakes hide. A UK company invoicing a US client for services usually zero-rates the invoice — but only if the place of supply is genuinely outside the UK and the client is a business. A UAE Free Zone company invoicing another Free Zone entity may need to apply the reverse charge instead of standard VAT. A Canadian company selling digital services into Australia may be caught by the Australian GST-on-imports rules from the first dollar.

We build the correct treatment into your invoicing setup once, at onboarding, so every future invoice carries the right tax code and the right narrative on the face of the invoice. That protects the client's VAT recovery and, more importantly, protects you from an assessment two years later when the authority disagrees with the treatment you assumed.