For a €100 sale with tax included at an applied rate of 21%, consumer tax is €17.36 and net revenue is €82.64. A 70% share of that net amount is €57.85.
The Content Seller declares the tax rate. This guide explains how the platform caps that rate, evaluates the evidence, and records the calculation on your statement. Open How your share is calculated at the top right of Finance → Sales Reports for a quick explanation.
Who needs this#
Content Owners reading a statement and asking why a line settled at the figure it did, and finance teams reviewing the calculation.
TL;DR#
- The rate deducted is the lower of what the store declared and the rate the platform holds for the buyer's country.
- A country claim only counts when there is evidence behind it. Without evidence the platform's rate for the store's own registered country stands in for the buyer's, and the lower of the declared rate and that one applies. The store's own country is the one country it cannot change from sale to sale.
- Every line on your statement names the rate, the reason it applied and the evidence rank behind it.
- The platform watches each store's pattern across periods and flags the ones worth a look.
- This is a check on the rate. It is not a defence against the grey market, and the last section says so plainly.
What the cap does#
A sale into a country carries that country's consumer tax. The Content Seller tells the platform what they charged and where the buyer was; the platform holds its own dated rate per country.
The rate applied to your sale is the lower of the two:
- Store declares 21%, the platform holds 21% for the Netherlands: 21% applies.
- Store declares 27%, the platform holds 21%: 21% applies. The excess never leaves your share.
- Store declares 9% on a product that qualifies for a reduced rate: 9% applies, because it is the lower of the two.
The cap is one-directional on purpose. A store that under-declares takes less off the top than it should, which is a problem for the store and its tax authority, not for your share.
A worked line#
A EUR 100 sale to a buyer in the Netherlands, tax included in the price, with the buyer's country confirmed at checkout:
| Gross | 100.00 |
| Declared rate | 21% |
| Platform reference rate for NL | 21% |
| Applied rate | 21%, corroborated |
| Consumer tax | 17.36 |
| Net | 82.64 |
| Your share at 70% | 57.85 |
Every one of those figures appears on your statement line, including the reason the rate applied. You are never asked to take the net on trust.
What the evidence ranks mean#
A country claim is only as good as what stands behind it, so each sale carries a rank:
| Rank | What it means |
|---|---|
| 1 | The buyer confirmed their country at checkout and the store passed that confirmation on. |
| 2 | The buyer's connection agreed with the country the store declared. |
| 3 | The store said so, and nothing else supports it. |
Rank 3 never corroborates. Nor does a rank the platform's bar excludes (the platform can require a checkout attestation and stop accepting an agreeing connection), a buyer country outside the store's declared footprint, or a connection arriving through a proxy, VPN, hosting provider or Tor exit. In every one of those cases the platform's rate for the store's own registered country stands in for the buyer's, the lower of the declared rate and that one applies, and your statement line names the reason. That is the important guarantee: the one country a store cannot vary from sale to sale is its own.
An anonymised connection removes corroboration. It refuses the sale only where your agreement's mismatch policy is refuse; under warn the sale proceeds at the fallback rate with a warning on the line.
What the platform watches#
Guards decide one sale at a time, and no single sale tells you much. Once a day the platform looks at each store's last thirty days and compares three shares of its turnover against ceilings the platform sets:
- how much settled at the store's own rate rather than the buyer's,
- how often the declared country and the evidence disagreed,
- how much arrived through an anonymised connection,
- how much was held out of settlement.
A store is compared against the ceilings only once it has enough sales in the window for a share to mean anything. Crossing one ceiling raises a warning; crossing several raises a critical alert, because each has an innocent explanation on its own and they rarely share one. If a store you have an agreement with is flagged, you can choose to be told under Commercial settings, Notifications. You will hear that a partner was flagged and nothing about any other content owner's sales.
None of this refuses a sale. It tells a person to look.
What this does not do#
It does not close the grey market. Tax over-declaration is one leak, and it is not the largest one. The larger leaks are regional arbitrage and resale after delivery, and those are held by three other layers: price and country validation at the transaction, region-locked stock at the key, and pattern detection across a store's transactions. The rule described on this page adds a check on the rate alongside the existing check on the price. It does not replace those layers and it does not make the grey market go away.
It does not deduct payment processing fees. Those are not taken out of your share by the platform.
It does not decide your commercial terms. Which basis applies, which currencies a store may sell in and which channels it may sell through are terms of your agreement, negotiated per partner and frozen into every statement the moment its period is aggregated. Changing a preference later never changes a contract anybody signed.
Related#
- Getting paid
- How a sale happens
- Where a sale is allowed — the selling footprint is also an admission gate, not only VAT evidence