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by riteshpatel 2777 days ago
Relax :)

This is what you need to know: https://www.cooleygo.com/so-you-owe-thousands-in-delaware-fr...

You should owe $400 ish based on issued shares and assets.

2 comments

Yep. This has little to do with Stripe Atlas. This is the default letter sent if you do not file your taxes. This is something Stripe can address by building a better UX around it though. Maybe a notification system.
Part of the reason why I blindly signed up for Stripe was because of the great experience I had with their other products.

https://flagtheory.com/stripe-atlas/ didn't exist when I signed up.

As several people have pointed out, you don't owe $100k in taxes. Maybe next time something like this happens, take a deep breath and read up on the relevant information before jumping to blame everyone involved for "fucking your American Dream".

You registered a business without paying attention to the necessary administrative steps like filing taxes, and since you didn't send Uncle Sam any information, he took a wild guess at what you owe.

One of the factor is Stripe Atlas for failing to explaining these things, anybody who is not on HN, is going to go through what I have in the past 10 minutes, which is full blown panic. Not my definition of a "great user experience".

sorry if I seemed angry, but censoring my threads will do that. It's hard to blame this on due dilligence, in this case I was sold on the expectation that they would take care of the paperwork for me, and be proactive in their communication about important dates like this.

I flagged your thread because it's not a productive topic for HN, it's you overreacting because you created a legal entity without doing your due diligence and then trying to get Stripe to reply to you faster by shaming them publicly.

As fun as it is to blame Stripe for bad UX, at the end of the day Stripe helped you make an agreement with the US Government: if you didn't read that agreement, that's on you.

And as general feedback: very few financial situations are improved by full blown panic. The government's penalties tend not to have per-minute granularity, so in almost every case it's worth taking a step back and gathering facts w/o the panic.

Still, this is a valuable thread for HN in some sense. I'm sure there are at least a handful of other people who would have made a similar mistake, and will be a little more cognizant of these issues after reading this. Hell, I might even be one of them, as I've been chewing on re-incorporating our business as a Delaware C-Corp. I think I would have read all the "fine print" so to speak anyway, but now you can bet I'll be even a touch more cautious and careful than before.

It may not be a thread that's useful to everyone, but it's not outright off-topic or useless when you consider how many startup founders or prospective founders visit HN.

thanks, how do i input these changes myself? went on the delaware tax site but the amount is still $80,000. How can I just pay $400 on that website?
Here's the page that lets you do it:

https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/ecorp/logintax.aspx?FilingTyp...

You have to enter the value of your net income and assets, and after you've done that it will update to the ~$400 amount.

Call Delaware Division of Corporations at (302) 739-3073 they can help you find your company with the name and tell you the exact amount you owe.