Improve Sales Tax Compliance with 75% Less Prep

Improve Sales Tax Compliance with 75% Less Prep Speaker 1: We are the only PLG company in the space. You could use Kintsugi for free, for life, by creating an account. You would not have a credit card on file. We'll tell you exactly how much sales tax to file. And people do that as one-off things, as like what they call as nexus study. We update our calculations every five minutes so that if a brand is like, hey, I'm super lean, I have somebody who can do the registration and filings, I'm like, here are the numbers. But the last thing I want people to do is not pay their sales tax. Do not shoot yourself in the foot by saying hey I'll deal with this next time or later or kick the can down the road and then it becomes a pesky problem where you're like how do I come up with two million dollars. Speaker 2: Welcome back to another episode of Chew on This. Today's a special one brought to you by Kintsugi. And we have the CEO and co-founder of Kintsugi itself, which is rare, where we have a tool that is actually something that we use and the CEO here to talk about it. So first of all, Puneet, we're super, super grateful that you came and spent time to come and talk to our audience about some of the really interesting topics we're going to get into today. But before we jump in, for the few people who may not know you, Give them a little bit of your background and what got you to building Kintsugi. Speaker 1: For sure. First of all, thank you for having me. Speaker 2: Of course. Speaker 1: I think the idea of Kintsugi was like, look, you cannot avoid death in taxes. And one of the things that I saw, whether you're running any different kind of businesses, you really need to get compliant on taxes from day zero, right? And all the solutions that I saw in the market When I did my previous startups, they were lacking. Just time to value, time to be able to go online, customer support was lacking. And I have a unique insight in this business. Both my grandfather and my father worked in taxation for 30 or 40 years each. And so I realized how hidden and how pesky this problem can be. And oftentimes people think that they need to be compliant on just taxes like on a yearly basis. But sales tax in particular is very unique because you actually need to be compliant and have to file and remit your sales tax on a monthly basis. Speaker 2: Before we get started, here's a quick word about today's sponsor, Kintsugi. Tax compliance is the last thing you can think about as growing a brand. At Obvi, we put it off for a long, long time. Until we crossed into 20 plus states and got hit with filing requirements we weren't prepared for, it finally started to become a serious liability that we cared about. That's why we started to use Kintsugi. Their platform automates everything. Nexus tracking, filing registrations, everything that you need to do in between, so we're never caught off guard. If you're scaling fast, don't wait until you're scrambling like we were. Check out Kintsugi's free tier at trykintsugi.com and get ahead of sales tax before it becomes a crisis. Now, let's get back to the episode. I think it's super, I mean, I love that you jumped right into this because I think one of the biggest pieces, especially when it comes to starting a business, right? There's a few things that people care about right away. One is, how am I going to get sales? People are starting to really care about retention because sales have become very expensive, right? So like, how am I going to retain these people, right? And then everyone's always like, I need to make sure that my P&L is good to go, right? And it feels like things kind of stop there for many businesses in saying, if my acquisition is good, my retention is strong, and I can save a P&L that has a strong profit, right? That's enough for my business to be doing what it needs to be doing. And then, you know, maybe paying some estimated earnings, estimated taxes every quarter. And I see a lot of people kind of chalk it up to that. Then there's this whole game of sales tax which is I think one of the probably most unsexy things about building a business because it's kind of like first of all you have to know like 50 different rules across all the different states. Now if you're selling internationally there's 200 plus different countries to like think about there. I think break this down for us. Why does sales tax conversation need to be in one of those first few pillars when you're starting a business and not something that is I'll get to it when I get to it? Speaker 1: Yeah, so without making this conversation overtly political, I just want to say that like, I think just as any business owner, you should be in control of your P&L. And the revenue that you collect as sales tax, you cannot touch with a 10 feet pole. That's number one. Number two, if you do not collect sales tax, that doesn't mean that you're off the hook, right? States like Texas have now dedicated departments where they basically go and do a monthly roll up of where you have been registered for paying payroll. where you're hiring W-2 employees or 1099 employees and they cross-check of whether or not you're paying sales tax because Now what has happened in the US and all around the world is sales tax has become the number one source of revenue for local governments at a city, county, and state level. Speaker 2: Insane. Speaker 1: So what that means is all the roads, all the schools, all the community pools are built by like sales tax, right? Or indirect taxation. And if you think about it, Places like Texas and Florida, they want high income individuals to move there. So they can't charge high income tax. They used to rely on property tax, but guess what? Property tax owners or property owners actually are the most active voting population. The one place where you actually can extract the piece of pie is sales tax. Speaker 2: That's insane. That's actually like, first of all, crazy facts. I did not even know that. Very, very interesting. I'm curious right now, when you look at it from, you talked about, you know, each of these states are now taking it upon themselves to probably become more serious about the follow-up and whatnot. When it comes to a business, right, is there a certain point that you say like, hey, like, do with this from day one? Or is this like, You can get away for the first, you know, few months or six months or maybe the first million dollars is not as serious. When is that clock start to tick and what's your advice for businesses that are super lean, don't have a ton of bandwidth to get to things? I just want to understand when is the right timing because I think there's probably a practical time and then there's a by the book time, right? So give us a little bit of color there. Speaker 1: So I think to answer your question properly, we'd have to take a step back. So 30,000 feet view, sales tax is applied on a city, county, and state level, and it's applied recursively. So sales tax in New York is 4%, but when you are walking around New York City and buying a cup of coffee, Typically, you're paying a sales tax of roughly around 8.875%. And that's because for that street in New York, that location, that physical place, the city is going to charge X amount. Some amount is going to go to the state and some amount is going to go to the county. As soon as you start doing the first invoice, you should be thinking in the back of your mind, that, hey, this invoice is now part of my responsibility. Should I start collecting and remitting sales tax? And we need to give local governments credit because if you're a remote seller and you're selling online, they give you a threshold of, let's say, roughly around $75,000 to be like, If you're below that threshold or if you're below, let's say, 100 transactions, don't worry about sales tax quite yet. But right after that, number one, you need to get registered. Number two, as soon as you're registered, you need to start collecting sales tax from the end customer because ultimately this is not a burden that they want to put on businesses. They want businesses to be empowered to collect the right sales tax. Let's say if you're buying something from me, I collect the right sales tax from you when I'm invoicing you and then I remit it. The problem happens is People are so inundated when they're running a lean company is they're focusing on go-to-market, they're focusing on retention that they forget this little detail. And now they get into this interesting conundrum of should I go back and look unprofessional to my customers and being like, yo, you bought a product four months ago. And I did a hundred thousand like number of transactions and now I need to collect half a million dollars from my customers because that money is not sitting in my bank account. Speaker 2: It's crazy and you've seen these scenarios. Oh so many times. Speaker 1: Scary. Yeah and like look if you want to sweep that under the rug That is a strategy, perhaps not the most prudent one, because again, with all of the e-invoicing, all of the payroll data, and think about the world we are living in, right? As the IRS weakens, The government agencies now know, especially the local governments, that the only way that they can basically fund these local infrastructure projects is by taxing consumption. And so, which is why for 65% of states in the US, sales tax is now the number one source of revenue. Speaker 2: It's crazy. Speaker 1: So of course they're going to come after you, right? And when they come after you, there's typically a penalty of 7% month over month that compounds, right? Then you have to pay fines, you have to get registered, you have to open your books, you have to hire lawyers. So I think the right thing to do is from day one, use a software like Kintsugi to basically say, hey, monitor my account for free and tell me when am I hitting these limits. Speaker 2: Smart. Speaker 1: Be ready. Yeah, just be ready. When I hit these limits, you click a button, you turn on tax collection, nothing comes out of here like profit margins and you collect the right amount and you remit the right amount. And one of the hidden effects of this is that I've seen during especially with this whole tariff thing going on is People who have their books super clean, they realize that they are able to fundraise faster because now they can go to bigger players, maybe growth equity firms, or raising more capital and say, hey, we are compliant, give us money. Fun fact, when a company is trying to exit, sales tax is the number one place where their valuation gets dinged. Really? Yeah. I had a brand who got an initial offer to sell for like $42 million. They ended up selling for $27 million. And the founder, when they saw that, the founder spent nearly $200,000 on lawyer cost of being like, can I get out of the sales tax obligation? And the answer was no. Speaker 2: Really? Speaker 1: Yeah. Unknown Speaker: It was just like holds from Departments of Revenue like on the business? Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow. Because they were selling across like states, so they had sales tax liability in all 48 jurisdictions and when somebody is currently buying that business, right? Speaker 2: It's going to be on them. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Wow. Speaker 2: It's really interesting. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: I'm really curious, so you know, Super great deep dive into understanding the importance of why this is there. I'd love to break down, when you look at a typical finance structure for a brand, you typically have either maybe an outsourced CFO or some sort of CFO You'll have some sort of intermediary, whether it's a VP of finance or head of finance, usually internally. You see some sort of bookkeeping team, whether it's with the fractional CFO or internally. And then you have some sort of form of controller, right? And then you, of course, almost everyone has what they call, who's your tax guy, right? So everyone has a tax guy or a girl. And from there that typically constructs many departments and then you have variations and layers of different workflows. Now from this I think the concerning part is Tax guy or girl doesn't really care about the sales tax fees. Yeah, the entire finance function and accounting function Doesn't really talk about sales tax. Yeah, and so it's almost always been like figure this out on your own and I think most of us as founders and operators are We're looking to this department to say, hey, anything that falls under the words tax, accounting, finance, cash is you guys. But somehow this thing kind of just falls in this like, I feel like it's kind of just in this shift of like, who's gonna touch this, who's gonna tackle this? Why is that the case? Why has sales tax been almost like this annexed item that, yeah, we all need to do it, clearly is very sensitive, very important, Yet, it's not part of a finance stack yet, and it's always been use these legacy products like Avalar or TaxJar. Luckily, you've had solutions like Kintsugi now, which are far better, cheaper, and more efficient, but why is it still so tool-oriented? Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think there are a couple of really good points that you hit there. I just want to come and say one thing. I think The way doing business works in countries like US, the countries have not done a good service to business owners to basically make their lives easier. Just like US healthcare, right? I have been in this country for the last 16 years. I still cannot understand how to decide what is in-network versus what is out-of-network. Same with taxes, right? Taxes is a non-revenue generating activity. Right. Often dreaded because nobody wants to get audited. And then there's so many different types of taxes. Business taxes, payroll taxes, income taxes, sales tax. Then there are R&D credits and whatnot. Right. And really, I think in order to understand where we are and how we got into this place, you really need to look at the history. So sales tax prior to 2018 used to be the problem of like really large companies and then South Dakota actually wanted to make an example out of Wayfair and they were like, you know guys, fuck you, you keep on using our infrastructure and sales tax rules were written for brick and mortar but Wayfair was shipping very large furniture All across the US and a lot of states were feeling like pissed off. They were like, where's our source of revenue? So they dragged Wayfair through the mud and this case went all the way to Supreme Court. Speaker 2: Wow. Speaker 1: And so prior to like 2018, the South Dakota versus Wayfair case, sales tax was just dependent based on who are you buying from right or and where they're located and so yeah where where is the business located right and then after this like supreme court Like law changed or the Supreme Court case. What came out of it is now is no remote sellers now would have to take care of collecting the right sales tax based on where is the customer located. So for physical goods that's the ship to address. So now suddenly, and given the nature of sales tax, now all these tax operators have to keep roughly 200,000 different rules at a city, county, state level in their mind. So even if a savvy businessman like you would be like, hey, my financial controller has this covered, but they'd be like, nobody taught me these rules. Not to mention, all across the globe, we are going through a worldwide shortage of accountants and CPAs. And CPAs, when they are getting their certification, they're not taught to be experts in sales tax. Speaker 2: That's a good point. Very good point. I remember when this was happening, actually, because I was talking to my uncle, and I think also at the time, Avalara was also becoming very big, and people were saying that The Supreme Court ruling on top of like Avalara and the ability to now like get to the jurisdiction level for taxes is the Amazon killer. Like that's what they were calling it. It's like now Amazon's going to get screwed by having to like handle all of these taxes. And now there's a software that there's no excuse that you can't do it anymore. Yeah. Unknown Speaker: I remember. Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's also another place where like, again, the system is so complicated. So I'll give you an example. If you're selling on a place like Amazon Marketplace or Fulfilled by Amazon, There's an act called the Marketplace Facilitator Act, where if you use these platforms, they take care of collecting and remitting the sales tax for you. But here's the kicker. More than 89% of brands today sell omni-channel. So they sell on Shopify, Amazon, they may sell on Fair, they may do some wholesale, etc. But all the transactions that are happening on these marketplace facilitators, Ashley, count towards that $75,000 or the 100 transactions, a threshold. So if you were to follow me on this nerdy journey for a second, why do you think from a first principle basis, platforms like QuickBooks or Shopify are not able to collect or calculate the right amount of sales tax? It's because they do not have 360 view of your revenue. Because in order to calculate sales tax, at the end of the day, this is not rocket science. But what you do need is 360 view of revenue. But Shopify does not see how many sales you have done on fair, how many sales you have done on wholesale, how many sales have you done on Amazon. So they are not able to figure out, hey, have you hit that threshold yet or not? So should we start collecting sales tax from you or not? All these amazing platforms, just like business owners, do not want to touch sales tax with a 10-feet pole. So they're like, well, we'll just rely on the business owner to tell us, hey, should we start collecting sales tax or not? So nobody gives you the perfect answer, even in software like QuickBooks, because they're like, to collect the right amount of sales tax, you need the exact amount to charge. based on the product you're selling and where the product is being shipped to. And there are more than 3,000 different kinds of products, right? And so how do you validate the address? How do you make sure it's the right amount? And if any of these companies, you know, they make a mistake, you know, guess what happens? All the other revenue that you collected, the sales tax portion that you did not collect correctly will come out of your profit margins. So people are like, hey, why do I need to pay for this? It's like, okay, you can pay like $10,000 a year. to make this problem go away or you can potentially pay hundreds of thousands of dollars or let's say because you're using a basic service, 2% of all your revenue when it comes time to paying your sales tax every month. Death in taxes, you can't avoid them. Unknown Speaker: And it's completely different. You can't even run away from it. These departments of revenues will just come to your bank and put a hold on 10K and then there's just nothing you can do about it. Speaker 1: Even if you're looking to exit the business or raising more capital, why would any savvy investor give you more money? If they're like, hey, this is one of your core jobs. Increase your revenue and show me your profit margin. If you're not sales tax compliant, Just canonically, your profit margins are wrong. Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break to talk about today's sponsor, Kintsugi. Sales tax feels like an annoying distraction, but it's a liability that can undermine your brand's future if it gets out of hand. The problem is, this is not just an issue that you can solve in your sleep. Understanding the compliance policy for all 50 states is almost impossible. At Obdi, we weren't sure where we owed, what was due, or what we might be missing. It was a mental load that we carried constantly. Kintsugi took that off our plate. Now, we get one clear dashboard, smart alerts when we're approaching thresholds, and no more guesswork or last-minute filing. If tax compliance is living rent-free in your brain, take it off your plate and go to TryKintsugi.com today. Now, let's get back to the episode. It's actually crazy because I feel like even just internally for us, I don't think we talk about it enough because I think it's taken care of now, thanks to you guys. But I think even before that though, there's not enough discord about this. Yet, it's probably almost as expensive as something you're ignoring on a marketing claim that can come back and screw you with the FTC. I think when it comes to that type of stuff, I see a marketer kind of shaking their seat because they're like, oh yeah, I don't want to get in trouble with the FTC, right? Because they come back and they can come back and say, hey, anyone you've targeted with this messaging is going to go be retroactively get impacted. But with this like similar to that like make a mistake and it carries like it's gonna catch up to you. It's not just hey moving forward. We're gonna look at this. I want to, you know, use that point to kind of understand a little bit. You get a bird's-eye view of hundreds if not thousands of brands and I'd love for you to maybe tell us a few stories of some of the good, bad, and ugly, right? Like, I think sometimes us as operators and founders and people in our seats We only learn because we see somebody went through something and we're like, I definitely don't want to do that. Obviously, we clearly don't learn enough from the good examples. So maybe give us a little bit of that color, what you're seeing, and maybe from that same purview, comment a little bit about just what you're seeing this year in terms of how businesses are even performing just on a higher note as well. Speaker 1: Yeah, my heart goes out to all the business owners, especially this year. Laws are changing before you even get the lowdown of like, hey, what has happened? And I see that in real time. Just ever since March and April, because we have this 360 view for all the revenue sources for any business, And currently we serve like 3,000 brands and put their sales tax on autopilot. So in real life, $8 billion worth of transactions flow through our platform. Speaker 2: Wow. Speaker 1: And I think in terms of the number of transactions, it's I think close to like, I want to say 10 million plus transactions. So through our APIs, I was in real time able to see which category, let's say like athleisure, how was that getting affected versus PC parts, versus like eyeglasses, versus health and nutritional like supplements, you know. One of the crazy examples I saw was I think One of the customers, and I'm not going to name the customer, they were using the Avalaras of the world. Not necessarily singling out like Avalara, but like a bigger brand. And they thought that they had it figured out. And then came the time where they were really pressed for cash. And so they wanted the audit reports. And they reached out to This company and radio silence. And so they came to Kintsugi and like, look, we have a free model. So we, unless you're doing like registrations or filing with us, we tell you what your nexus or your sales tax exposure is for free, forever. So they installed our app and they saw that they owed back taxes for 900K. And they were looking to raise more money in April when everything was like very tight. And it was a very hot conversation where they were like, how do I get compliant? Because I have a term sheet in hand. But I told the person who is going to write me the check. That I am compliant on sales tax and I was using a software for doing that. They never turned on sales tax collection, so they were on the hook, right? So it's always going to come from their profit margin and because all of these financial controllers over the last 14 years kept on changing, the person who had set it up had left the company. So I have never seen a founder being so worried. I think one of the good things I saw coming out of this data piece of actually seeing the bird-eye view is A lot of people want a sense of security and they want to clean up their house. So sales tax actually also is contingent on where you store your inventory. So it's based on physical presence, it's also based on where your customers are looking for. So one of the other customers that we, who is a multi-time exiting founder, just like Builds companies in nutrition space, like rolls them up, sells them, starts another one, just boom, boom, boom, printing money. What they did was as soon as they realized that they needed more cash, they reached out and they were like, hey, where's the best place where I can move my inventory? to save up on, I kid you not, I think they saved 1.5% in just percentage of like how much sales tax that they would owe. And when they did that, as a result, they didn't have to take a line of credit. Unknown Speaker: Wow. Speaker 1: Right? Speaker 2: Even bigger savings. Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's like with e-commerce, the devil is in the details because it's A lot of money for all these companies are tied in procuring, inventory, selling, marketing, you know, retention. And so you really have to be tight. And I think one of the most beautiful experiences was this company started coming to us and they were like, hey, can you build all these features? And me and my co-founder, Jeff, we were like, hey, hold on. Like, we don't do this. Why are you asking me all these features? And they were like, I actually get a better view of my business than I get from QuickBooks because I'm able to connect all these sources. It's amazing. And so I want to optimize and I'm happy to ship. These like big pallets of things because my profit margins used to be 4.5% and now you brought it up to 6.5%. Unknown Speaker: It's huge. Speaker 2: It's amazing. That's so interesting. Unknown Speaker: I think just going back to what you were talking about, because I've been asked, should we use like an Avalara? Should we use like a Kintsugi? And what's the difference? People don't even know just fundamentally. And I think the biggest thing you hit on the head, it's like, My question that I ask them is, do you have someone internally to manage the software if you were to sign up with like an Avalar or a TaxJar, right? Because you need someone to register the state tax accounts. You need someone to go into Shopify and toggle the tax collections. You need someone to actually remit and file those payments. And if you don't have someone internally, which a lot of e-commerce brands, super lean, just don't have someone to do that, then you need to rely on a SaaS slash agency solution, right? Which is what you guys do. I remember going to you guys, with our current process, I was spending maybe like, 12 to 15 hours a month, just getting like a stack of 30 letters a week. That was just like, we don't have a fax machine, use your phone. Can we please just get me a fax machine? Opening each one, like scanning the letters. And like, again, like there was no one below me. Didn't have interns at the time. Like I just had something I had to do amongst all my other stuff and send all those letters to the agency. They would come back with any questions. And then like, I'd have to go back and forth until I'm just getting the answer. Hey, how much do I owe? And when is that payment getting out? So I can put this in my model, right? Speaker 1: Yeah. Unknown Speaker: Such a manual and tedious process and then now I think honestly I get maybe an email once a week and collectively within a month maybe two minutes of like click click click and then everything's filed and I see all the payments I'm remitting. So I think like that's the biggest thing. You can shoot yourself in the foot if you're just like onboarding like these, you know, big names like an Avalar or whatever and then you don't have someone to manage it. You actually are adding way more like bandwidth on yourself than you actually need to. Speaker 1: Thousand percent and I think that's one of those features we did not think would be a killer and then just now partner with like an OCI technology which we give you a physical, a ghost address where all your letters are directed and all your letters are then scanned automatically and sent to his inbox, your inbox if you want it and our inbox and we are able to act on it even before you wake up. Unknown Speaker: You guys like recently launched this, right? A few months ago, the thing? Speaker 1: This was about a year and a half ago, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was just, see again, it's when you're getting a stack of like 50 different letters, right? And you do not understand sales tax and you do not want to understand sales tax. Tariffs are changing. You want to grow, you want to show retention. What would you rather focus on? The top line of the business. So I think we find ourselves in this very interesting, very unsexy category. But I think by being transparent and honestly, we are not reinventing the wheel. We are just answering the questions that people have. Yes, we are leveraging AI to automate a lot of the processes that People would have to do themselves otherwise. Unknown Speaker: And opens up for human error. Speaker 1: Exactly. But I think the fundamentals of the business still remain the same, right? You have to pay sales tax. You want a peace of mind so that you're not getting that stack of letters. So let's automate that. Okay, you may have some questions about your sales tax filings. Okay, let's hop on a phone call. Let's do a video call. Let's make sure that all these numbers are correct. And then we'll tell you one of the other things that like companies in this space they tried to do is They will withdraw your sales tax payments 14 days before it's due because they sit on so much money, right? Imagine like 8 billion transactions, right? Sales tax is roughly like, let's say 6%. 6% of that is sitting in my bank account. How many percent points for 14 days I can use that cash for? But we intentionally designed the system to be like, we will withdraw the money Exactly at the same time we actually pay your sales tax so that you can actually use that money. Speaker 2: That goes much longer for us. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's half a month. Come on. So again, everyone says they put sales tax on autopilot and so do we, but I think what matters is Are you trying to help the founder and are you trying to help the business solve this very pesky problem or are you just being like... Yeah, we are another app that you install and we are just hand baby. I think for us, we really believe in transparency and we stand by our numbers. So if we mess up and knock on wood, that hasn't happened yet, but we have audit insurance. We have the Kintsugi insurance that we will cover the cost, right? Because why should that come out of your EBITDA? Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's great. So I really like the I mean, just the thesis of how you guys even started, and I think you're very open about you're not the only solution, but there's a reason you guys have built the way you have, which does create an opportunity for, you know, power users like Aravi for Obvi and his counterparts at other brands to be able to say, hey, this is exactly what I need. Speaker 1: Thousand percent and I'll just say this as well. We are the only PLG company in this space. What that means is, sorry I have my nerd hat on, but you could use Kintsugi for free for life by creating an account and you would not have a credit card on file. We'll tell you exactly how much sales tax to file. Speaker 2: That's insane. Awareness for free is crazy. Speaker 1: Yeah, and people do that as one-off things. That's like what they call a nexus study. We update our calculations every five minutes so that if a brand is like, hey, I'm super lean. I have somebody who can do the registration and filings. I'm like, here are the numbers. Go do it. Speaker 2: More power to you. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's completely fine. But the last thing I want people to Do is not pay their sales tax and then be on the hook, right? I'm not here to make money. I'm just... Speaker 2: 100%. Speaker 1: Of course, everyone likes money and I like customers and I like serving them. But I think the bigger picture is do not shoot yourself in the foot by saying, hey, I'll deal with this next time or later or kick the can down the road and then it becomes a pesky problem where you're like, how do I Come up with two million dollars. Speaker 2: It's a great call out. As we wrap up, I want to do a quick rapid fire with you. So what is the one state that you absolutely hate dealing with sales tax? What's the toughest state? Speaker 1: Oh, there are so many, but Colorado. Speaker 2: Colorado. Speaker 1: 1100 different jurisdictions. It's a home rule state. They say on a state level, they don't have sales tax, but city of Denver is like. Speaker 2: What's the toughest category in e-commerce for sales tax management? Speaker 1: I would say nutrition. Really? Speaker 2: Over apparel? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Wow. Speaker 1: Just because like even depending on the content and like how you classify nutrition and nutrition labels, it could be very different. Interesting. We actually helped a nutrition company. They were overpaying sales tax because they were using a different solution because they were using a generic category and we found Better category categorization for them using our AI. So nobody had to do any work, but you have installed our app so we know what you're selling. And so they came back to us and they're like, are you sure? I used to pay like $29,000 in sales tax. You're saying I'm only going to pay $7,000 and I'm like, Yeah, 1000%. Speaker 2: Yeah, you're good. Speaker 1: But again, devil in the details, right? Speaker 2: That's huge. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Last question on this is, what do you see on the horizon for sales taxes? Is there going to be some big changes coming? Do you see things evolving? What do founders or operators need to be looking out for? Speaker 1: Unfortunately, I think the system is going to become a lot more complicated because everyone around the world, even places like Dubai, now have value-added tax, which is just a form of sales tax, right? Because they are realizing, hey, I can't tax people on their income. I can't tax them on their property. I can tax consumption. Just personally, I think like I can get behind that because that actually drives the economy and like builds our roads and supports our infrastructure. And if you're consuming more, you pay more. Nobody's asking you to consume more, but you know, it's I think the fairest system in my opinion. Speaker 2: That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. Poojan, this is incredible. I thank you for one, being a tool for something that, you know, our finance team, especially Ravi, who's very lean team, but can have something that he doesn't have to worry about and doesn't need a fax machine anymore. So that's super helpful. But to all our viewers, if there is one thing that you can wrap up and give us advice on, whether it's as a founder or operator or just as a human being, what's that one takeaway, something to chew on? Speaker 1: Yeah, I would just say like, look, both my co-founder Jeff and I, we have a core set of beliefs of creating value for businesses. We are not here to maximize the amount of dollar that we want to extract from businesses like Obvi or etc. I am not going to sit here and say, hey, use Kintsugi, but I will say that use an app like Kintsugi to really see what is your accurate sales tax exposure, which is why we built the app in a way where you can use us for free for life. And even if you decide not to be compliant, at least you know what's hiding in the future. Awesome. Speaker 2: Chew on that. Speaker 1: Chew on that. If you want more from us, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, follow us on TikTok, and check out the website chewonthis.io.