支付服务Stripe与会计税务服务Intuit联手,为小型企业和劳动者更好地追踪自己的财务
创业公司 Stripe 致力于为随“按需经济”兴起的一大批新型服务增强支付功能,这些服务为劳动者提供了各种按需赚钱手段。与此同时,为小型企业和个体经营者开发会计及税务软件的 Intuit 致力于帮助那些劳动者更好地追踪自己的财务状况。
因此,Stripe 和 Intuit 联手开发一款“在按需劳动者收到付款时立刻识别为收入,并帮助他们冲销工作相关费用从而优化税金”的产品也就合情合理了。
通过这一合作产品,在使用 Stripe 支付的按需平台上工作的劳动者将能够方便地连接 Intuit 最新的个体经营者版 QuickBooks 在线软件 。连接完成后,QuickBooks 产品就能立刻将支付款项识别为收入,并由此帮助劳动者追踪自己的财务状况——尤其是在义务纳税方面。
据 Intuit 个体经营者解决方案的副总裁、总经理亚历克斯·克里斯(Alex Chriss)称,大部分 1099 劳动者(译注:即收入为税前收入、年底报税的个体经营者)通常都不知道自己每月、每季或者每年的收入。部分原因在于,与拿工资的员工不同,他们不会收到定期的工资清单——相反地,他们是从所工作的按需平台上收到不定期的支付款项。
另外,他们不善于记录可以用来冲销税额的开支,不过这又是另一个话题了。
为了吸引不断增长的按需劳动者或者 1099 劳动者,Intuit 将个体经营者版 QuickBooks 免费开放。每月 7.99 美元则会获得一些付费功能,比如允许用户在软件中连接银行账户和信用卡,从而追踪收入和支出并予以分类。
Intuit 希望以免费试用的方式,通过 QuickBooks 让劳动者对自己的财务状况有更多的了解。比如说,能够估算出需要缴纳多少的每季税金和年终税金。这就避免了收到巨额税单或者因每季纳税不足而被处罚的可能性。
为了简化收入追踪流程,QuickBooks 中集成 Stripe 的功能将会向从使用 Stripe 作为支付手段的公司获取收入的劳动者免费开放。据 Stripe 战略合作关系主管克里斯蒂娜·科尔多瓦(Cristina Cordova)称,其中包括了 Lyft,Sidecar,Summon,Flywheel,Handy,Homejoy 以及 Washio 这样的公司。
由于这些公司以承包商的形式雇佣劳动者,他们无法提供税务方面的建议或福利。然而通过直接在 QuickBook 这样的产品中追踪收入,那些个体经营劳动者就能够更好地管理自己的财务。
另外值得注意的是,双方的合作只是帮助到了一部分按需劳动者,并不是所有的。比如说 Uber 司机就无法享受这一福利,因为 Uber 并不使用 Stripe。不过这些劳动者仍然可以使用付费版 QuickBooks 连接自己的银行账户。
无论如何,这不正是免费增值商业模式的美妙之处么?
Stripe Partners With Intuit To Help On-Demand Workers Keep Track Of Their Finances
Startup Stripe helps to power payments for a large number of new services offering up ways to make cash as part of the growing “on-demand economy.” Meanwhile Intuit, which makes accounting and tax software for small businesses and the self-employed, wants to help those workers keep better track of their finances.
So it makes sense for Stripe and Intuit to work together on a product that will instantly recognize earnings that on-demand workers receive and help them optimize their taxes with write-offs for work-related expenses.
Through the partnership, people who work for on-demand platforms that make their payments through Stripe will be able to easily connect with Intuit’s new QuickBooks Online Self-Employed software. Once that’s done, the QuickBooks product will be able to immediately recognize payments as income, and as a result will be able to help workers track their finances, and especially their tax obligations.
According to Alex Chriss, who is VP and GM of Intuit’s Self-Employed Solutions, most 1099 workers generally aren’t aware of their monthly, quarterly, or annual income. That’s in part because they don’t get the same income statements as salaried employees — instead they receive irregular payments from the on-demand platforms they work for.
They also aren’t doing a good job of tracking expenses they could deduct from their taxes, but that’s another issue.
To court the growing base of on-demand or 1099 workers, Intuit makes its self-employed QuickBooks software available to use for free. For $7.99 a month it also offers some paid features, like enabling users to connect their bank accounts and credit cards to the software in order to track and categorize income and expenses.
The hope is that by doing so, QuickBooks can provide more visibility into their worker finances. For instance, being able to estimate how much they would need to pay in quarterly and year-end taxes. That can eliminate the possibility of receiving a big surprise tax bill or being hit with fines for not contributing enough in quarterly taxes.
To simplify the process of tracking income, the Stripe integration is being offered for free to workers who receive income from companies that use it for payments. That includes companies like Lyft, Sidecar, Summon, Flywheel, Handy, Homejoy, and Washio, according to Cristina Cordova, who is the head of strategic partnerships at Stripe.
Because those companies hire workers as contractors, they can’t offer tax advice or benefits. But by tracking income directly in a product like QuickBooks, those workers can generally do a better job of managing their finances.
Anyway, it’s worth noting that the Stripe partnership will help some on-demand workers, but not others. Uber drivers, for instance, won’t benefit because Uber doesn’t use Stripe. But those workers will still be able to pay QuickBooks to connect their bank accounts.
Anyway, isn’t that the beauty of the freemium business model?
来源:techcrunch