One Sale to Mauritius Can Trigger a VAT Registration: The 15% Digital Services Rule With No Minimum
Mauritius charges 15% VAT on foreign digital services since January 1, 2026 — with no turnover threshold, so a single sale triggers MRA registration.
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Indie Hackers
Financial guidance for indie hackers and solo founders
Buy vs. Build in the AI Era: A 2026 Framework for Indie SaaS Founders Deciding on Financial Tooling
A five-factor framework — 36-month total cost of ownership, time to value, differentiation, integration, and compliance risk — for deciding which SaaS financial tooling to buy and which to build, with a worked example at $20,000 MRR where buying a billing engine costs roughly $25,000–$45,000 against $50,000–$100,000+ to build one.
App Store Payout Reconciliation: Why Your Take-Home Is ~60% Below Gross Revenue
App-store payouts land roughly 60% below sticker price after VAT, store commission, refunds, tax withholding, and currency conversion. This guide traces each deduction from gross sales to the bank deposit and lays out a 30-minute monthly reconciliation workflow for indie developers.
Micro-SaaS and API Bookkeeping: Usage-Based Billing, Processor Reconciliation, and Why 70% Margins Still Need Real Books
Micro-SaaS and API businesses at 70%+ gross margins still need accrual accounting — how to structure hybrid subscription-plus-overage and credit-pack billing, reconcile Stripe and Merchant of Record payouts to gross revenue, and keep deferred revenue, COGS, and processor fees audit-ready.
Sri Lanka's 18% Digital Services VAT: What Foreign SaaS and App Sellers Must Register For
Sri Lanka now charges 18% VAT on digital services sold by non-resident providers once revenue exceeds LKR 36 million a year or LKR 9 million in a quarter, effective July 1, 2026, with quarterly filing and registration due within three months of crossing the threshold.
The AI Coding Bill Comes Due: How Indie Developers Can Track and Cap Runaway Copilot, Cursor, and Claude Spend
GitHub Copilot's 2026 shift to usage-based AI Credits, an 18.6x rise in per-developer token consumption, and $60–$200/month agentic tiers are turning flat AI subscriptions into unpredictable bills. Here is a practical framework for indie developers to cap, track, and reconcile AI coding tool spend.
The AI Orchestrator Premium: Why Some Freelancers Are Earning 34% More in 2026 (and Others Are Earning Less)
Upwork's Future Workforce Index 2026 finds freelancers doing AI-related work earn 34% more per hour, with earnings on complex AI work up 45% year-over-year while per-contract pay for commodity generative-AI gigs fell 13% — here's what the "AI Orchestrator" split means for freelancers and indie developers, and how to land on the right side of it.
Chrome Extension Developer Bookkeeping: Reconciling Payouts After Google Killed In-App Payments
Google deprecated Chrome Web Store Payments in 2021, leaving extension developers to reconcile Stripe, Paddle, or ExtensionPay payouts by hand — here is a three-way match workflow, per-extension ledger structure, and how to treat review-delay refund spikes as a distinct bookkeeping category.
ASC 606 for Indie App Developers: Should You Record App Store Revenue Gross or Net?
Most indie developers are principals under ASC 606's principal-versus-agent test, so a $9.99 App Store sale is $9.99 of revenue plus a $3.00 platform-fee cost of sales — not a $6.99 net deposit. Here's the three-indicator control test, current Apple and Google fee tiers, and the exact journal entries to book it correctly.
You Bought a Micro-SaaS, Not Software: Purchase Price Allocation and the 15-Year Section 197 Rule
Software acquired as part of buying a business amortizes over 15 years under IRC Section 197 — not the 36 months standalone software gets. How to allocate a micro-SaaS purchase price across the seven IRS asset classes, agree on Form 8594 with your seller, and record it in a plain-text ledger.
App Store External Purchase Links: The 2026 Accounting Guide for iOS Developers
US iOS developers can currently run external purchase links at 0% Apple commission while courts settle a replacement rate. This guide covers the bookkeeping fallout — the merchant-of-record shift, sales tax nexus, reconciling two 1099s, and Apple's 15-day transaction reporting rule.
Bootstrapped SaaS Valuation Multiples in 2026: What Indie Founders Actually Get on Acquire.com
2026 data from 600+ Acquire.com listings shows bootstrapped SaaS selling at roughly 2.6x TTM revenue and 10.7x profit — a 30–50% discount to public comps. Here's how NRR, CAC payback, customer concentration, and reconciled books move your multiple, and the diligence documents buyers actually request.