Uruguayan VAT on Stripe Digital Services in QuickBooks

A US company sells two products to people in Montevideo: a $12 monthly subscription to on-demand yoga classes on video, and a $20 monthly project-management app. Stripe Tax treats both the same way. Its Uruguay entry lists a registration threshold of one transaction for digital products sold to consumers. Uruguay's own rules do not treat them the same. The decree that sets the scope of Uruguay's tax on foreign online services reaches audiovisual content and online intermediation, and nothing else. The video subscription is in. The project-management app, on the decree's text, is not.

That gap is the first thing to settle for Uruguay, and it decides everything after it: whether you register with the DGI (Uruguay's tax authority), whether you add a Uruguay registration in Stripe, and whether you owe a second tax that Stripe never calculates, Uruguay's 12 percent income tax on non-residents.

This guide covers what Uruguay taxes and why the scope is narrower than Stripe's, how a customer is placed in Uruguay, registration without a local representative, the 22 percent rate and the 12 percent income tax, business customers who withhold, a worked quarter, the quarterly payments and annual return, the dollar option, and what reaches QuickBooks. It is bookkeeping guidance, not tax advice.

Acodei brings Stripe Tax amounts into QuickBooks, so the Uruguayan tax you collect is already in your liability account when the quarter closes. Start a free trial.

What Uruguay taxes: two kinds of online service, not all of them

Uruguay did not create a new tax for foreign sellers. Law 19.535 of 2017 extended two existing taxes, the IVA (Uruguay's value added tax) and the IRNR (its income tax on non-residents), to certain services supplied over the internet from abroad. The law's wording is wide. Uruguay's consolidated tax code, in the text IMPO publishes, now says services provided "through the Internet, technological platforms, computer applications, or similar, when they are destined for, consumed or economically used in the country, will be considered performed entirely within it" (our translation; the law and decrees are published in Spanish only, and every quotation from them here is ours).

The regulation narrowed it. Decree 144/018, published on 29 May 2018 and applying to taxable events from 1 January 2018, added Article 26 bis to the IVA regulations. Its first paragraph repeats the law. Its second limits it: "The services referred to in the preceding paragraph are those included in articles 65 bis of Decree 150/007 ... and 21 bis of Decree 149/007."

Article 21 bis is about audiovisual content. It covers income from producing, distributing or intermediating films and tapes, and from "transmissions of any audiovisual content, including those made through the internet, technological platforms, computer applications, or other similar means, such as access to and download of films." It takes its definition of audiovisual from Article 3 of Law 19.307.

A 2019 presentation hosted on the DGI's website puts it plainly: the regulation "narrowed the broad regime the Law gave to every kind of internet business, clarifying that the service was 'transmission of any audiovisual content', not any service."

The second category is intermediation. Article 26 ter covers platforms that intervene in the supply or demand of services where the activity is "basically automated," needs "minimal human intervention," and is not viable without information technology. If both the provider of the underlying service and the customer are in Uruguay, the platform's service is fully Uruguayan. If only one of them is, Article 26 ter treats it as performed "50% within the national territory."

Where that leaves a SaaS company

What you sell to Uruguayan customers	Uruguay's decree	Stripe Tax's Uruguay entry
Streaming or downloadable video, courses delivered as video, any audiovisual content	In scope (Article 21 bis): IVA on the full price, IRNR on the income	Digital products: taxable from the first sale
A marketplace or booking app matching service providers and customers	In scope (Article 26 ter): 50% or 100% of the platform's fee	Digital products: taxable from the first sale
Business software, project tools, APIs, cloud storage	Not listed in Articles 21 bis or 26 ter	Digital products: taxable from the first sale

The last row is where Stripe and the decree part ways. Stripe's Uruguay entry says "remote sellers providing digital goods or electronically supplied services (digital products) to consumers in Uruguay must register for VAT from the first sale," with no carve-out for products outside the audiovisual category.

Two cautions before you act on the gap:

• The law is still wide. The narrowing lives in a decree, and Uruguay's executive can change a decree without a new law. Check the current text before you decide, and recheck each year.
• Mixed products are judgment calls. A course platform that is mostly video, or an app with a video library inside it, sits closer to the line than a pure SaaS tool. That is a question for a Uruguayan adviser, not for this guide.

What Stripe's monitoring will tell you anyway

Stripe Tax's threshold monitoring will put Uruguay in front of you after one sale whatever you sell, because it says it assumes "all sales are taxable at the destination." Stripe is explicit that the tool only "highlights potential registration obligations, but it's up to you to confirm whether registration is actually required in each jurisdiction." Stripe only calculates Uruguayan tax once you add a Uruguay registration, so the decision is yours. Our threshold monitoring entry explains what the Needs attention tab is and isn't telling you.

The rest of this guide assumes your product is in scope.

How Uruguay decides a customer is there

Article 21 bis places the customer in Uruguay when either of these is in Uruguay:

1. The IP address of the device used to contract the service.
2. The customer's billing address.

Only where neither applies does the decree fall back to a presumption, "unless proven otherwise": the customer is in Uruguay if they pay through electronic means "administered from our country," such as Uruguayan cards, bank accounts or e-money.

One more rule changes how subscriptions work. "In the case of successive services, the location of the customer shall be determined at the time of contracting." A subscriber who signs up from Montevideo stays a Uruguayan customer when they travel. One who signs up from Buenos Aires and later moves to Montevideo is not caught by the IP test.

Stripe Tax works differently. Its customer locations guide says it uses a single address per calculation, taken from the shipping address, then the billing address, then the payment method's billing details, then the IP address. Two edge cases follow:

• A customer with a Miami billing address who signed up from a Uruguayan IP address is Uruguayan under the decree. Stripe will place them in Florida.
• Stripe calculates from the addresses on file when it calculates. The decree fixes the location at signup.

Compare Peru, where any one of four facts is enough, and Chile, where it takes two: our guides to Peruvian IGV and Chilean VAT cover both.

Registering with the DGI as a foreign digital provider

The DGI runs a dedicated procedure, Registration of a foreign company for the supply of digital services, for companies whose activity in Uruguay is exclusively the services in Articles 21 bis and 21 ter. Registration gives you a number in the RUT, Uruguay's single tax registry. What the DGI asks for:

• Form 0351 (registration), plus Form 0352 for related individuals and Form 0353 for related companies where they apply. Your tax domicile is your foreign address.
• A notarial certification covering, among other points, the signatories' identity and signatures, your company's legal existence, the signatory's powers (a power of attorney no more than 30 days old, or a fresh certificate of its validity), your start date, and a statement that your activity is exclusively the Article 21 bis and 21 ter services.
• A professional stamp, 270 pesos for 2026.

You can file online with a verified gub.uy user or another electronic ID, choosing "Trámite RUT Exclusivo" and then "Personas jurídicas del exterior (sin Establecimiento Permanente)," or in person in Montevideo by appointment.

The deadline runs before you start. The DGI says the procedure is done before activities begin, up to 10 days in advance, and late registration carries a fine. If you are already selling in-scope services to Uruguay, you are late.

No local representative. DGI Resolution 6409/018 lets providers with no physical presence whose business in Uruguay is exclusively these services "dispense with the designation of a representative," as long as they constitute a domicile under Article 27 of the Tax Code. The DGI's page adds that if you stop being exclusive (say you open a Uruguayan sales office), you must name one. Our tax representative entry covers why other countries insist on one.

Your own invoices count. The same resolution says documentation issued under the rules of your home country is valid in Uruguay "to the extent that the taxpayer is identified and the amount generated is detailed." A Stripe invoice or receipt with your company name and the amount meets that.

The rate: 22 percent IVA, and a 12 percent income tax Stripe never shows

IVA. Uruguay's basic IVA rate is 22 percent, set in the VAT title of the consolidated code. For an audiovisual service, Article 26 bis makes the whole service Uruguayan, so the 22 percent applies to the full price. For intermediation where only one side is in Uruguay, the 50 percent rule means the tax falls on half the platform's fee, an effective 11 percent.

Priced exclusive, a $12 plan becomes $14.64. Priced inclusive, the tax inside $12 is $12 × 22/122, or $2.16, and your revenue is $9.84. Our guide to inclusive and exclusive tax in QuickBooks covers how each posts. Check the rate on a test Uruguayan invoice in Stripe before you go live.

IRNR. This is the part a Stripe-only view misses. Article 21 bis doesn't only decide the IVA. It says the income from these services is "entirely of Uruguayan source," which brings it into the IRNR. The consolidated code sets the IRNR base for this kind of income as "the total of Uruguayan-source income," meaning revenue with no deduction for your costs, and the rate for "remaining income" at 12 percent. Entities resident in low or no-tax jurisdictions pay 25 percent.

The IRNR is your tax, not your customer's. Nothing adds it to an invoice, Stripe Tax doesn't calculate it (Stripe's Uruguay entry lists VAT as the only tax type), and it never appears in Stripe's tax reports. A seller who files the IVA from Stripe's export and stops there has missed a second tax entirely.

Ask your home-country accountant whether the IRNR is creditable against your own income tax. That depends on your country and your tax position, not on Uruguay.

Business customers withhold; consumers pay you

Stripe's Uruguay entry says sales to business customers "don't trigger any tax registration obligations as remote sellers aren't required to collect tax on those sales." Its customer tax ID table lists uy_ruc, "Uruguayan RUC number," with a 12-digit example, and marks its impact on tax calculation as Yes: with a valid-format RUC on the customer, Stripe Tax charges no Uruguayan IVA. As the same page notes, it does this "when the tax ID has the required number format, regardless of the government verification result."

Uruguay's rules explain what happens instead. Decree 144/018 made Uruguayan businesses that pay for audiovisual services withholding agents for both taxes from 1 July 2018. The DGI presentation summarizes it:

• Audiovisual service sold to an IRAE taxpayer (a Uruguayan business) or the state: the customer withholds.
• Audiovisual service sold to a consumer: no withholding. You collect and pay.
• Intermediation, any customer: withholding is suspended. The decree suspends it for Article 21 ter services.

Two practical consequences for an audiovisual seller:

• A business that pays by bank transfer may pay you net of the IRNR it withholds. Your QuickBooks invoice then stays partly open. The difference is tax paid on your behalf, not a bad debt, so clear it to the IRNR expense account, not to a discount.
• Keep withheld sales separate. The tax on them is paid by your customer, not by you, so they don't belong in the quarterly figures you pay yourself. Ask your Uruguayan adviser how they appear on the annual return.

The Stripe customer tax ID entry explains where uy_ruc lives on the customer object and how it reaches invoices. For the general idea of moving tax to a business buyer, see reverse charge.

One more duty for business sales: Resolution 6409/018 asks you to inform Uruguayan business customers each month of the IVA on their purchases, because that is what lets them deduct it. Resolution 9270/018 drops the duty for sellers whose documents show the IVA itemized. If your Stripe invoices to Uruguayan businesses carry a tax line, you're covered.

Paying quarterly, filing once a year

Uruguay gives foreign digital providers a lighter schedule than local companies. Resolution 9270/018 sets it:

• IVA: payments "will be made quarterly," with an annual IVA return ("declaración jurada").
• IRNR: providers whose business is exclusively these services make their advance payments ("anticipos") quarterly, with the IRNR settled annually.

Both run on the DGI's published calendar of due dates. Check it for the current year rather than counting from the quarter end yourself.

The dollar option

Resolution 9270/018 lets these providers calculate and pay both the IRNR and the IVA in US dollars, on two conditions:

1. Every transaction in the return was documented in dollars.
2. You carry out no other taxed activity in Uruguay, or any other activity was subject to withholding.

Once chosen, the option holds "for at least three (3) fiscal years," as long as you still meet the conditions.

For a seller pricing in USD, the option means the dollar tax in Stripe's export is the dollar figure on the return. It also means pricing even one Uruguayan customer in pesos breaks the first condition for that return. If you sell in pesos, or file in pesos for another reason, set Stripe's filing currency columns aside and convert at the rate your Uruguayan adviser confirms the DGI requires.

A worked quarter for a video subscription company

A Florida company sells on-demand yoga classes on video, priced at $12 a month in USD with tax added on top. It registered with the DGI, chose the dollar option, and has a Uruguay registration in Stripe Tax. October to December 2026:

1. 48 Uruguayan subscribers for the full quarter. 48 × $12 × 3 = $1,728.00. IVA $380.16.
2. 3 new subscribers from 1 November. 3 × $12 × 2 = $72.00. IVA $15.84.
3. A refund. One subscriber cancels on 3 October and gets October back through a credit note: −$12.00, and −$2.64 of IVA returned with it.
4. A Montevideo studio buys a $100 a month instructor licence and stored its RUC as uy_ruc. Stripe charged no IVA. The studio withholds, so this sale stays out of the quarterly figures the company pays itself.

IVA for the quarter: $380.16 plus $15.84, less $2.64, is $393.36. That matches the Uruguay rows of Stripe's export for the quarter.

IRNR for the quarter: 12 percent of the consumer revenue after the refund. $1,728.00 plus $72.00, less $12.00, is $1,788.00, and 12 percent of that is $214.56. Stripe shows none of this.

The full Uruguay cost: $607.92 for the quarter, of which only $393.36 came from customers. The other $214.56 comes out of margin. On an exclusive price, the IVA is passed through. The IRNR never is.

What reaches QuickBooks, and what you book yourself

Acodei syncs the tax Stripe Tax calculated, so the Uruguay registration in Stripe has to be in place first, and Stripe Tax has to be active in your Stripe account.

For a US QuickBooks company, Acodei's method is the Tax Product: a non-inventory "Sales Tax" product mapped to a liability account, with all Stripe Tax amounts on a sale rolled into one line on the QuickBooks invoice or sales receipt. QuickBooks' Sales Tax Center doesn't let third parties create official tax rates for US companies, which is why the product approach is the one that works there. Acodei's documentation notes this needs Stripe Tax used with Stripe Invoicing or Stripe Checkout. You file from Stripe's reports and pay from the liability account.

For a QuickBooks company outside the US, Acodei's documentation describes a second option: mapping individual Stripe tax rates to QuickBooks tax codes you set up, such as a 22 percent Uruguay code.

The refund, item 3. Acodei's documentation says a refund issued through a credit note carries the line-level tax breakdown. A refund made on the payment alone may not show how much was tax, and that case can need a manual adjustment in QuickBooks. Refund Uruguayan invoices through credit notes. Our guide to refunding Stripe Tax in QuickBooks walks through both cases.

The studio, item 4. Stripe calculated no tax, so there is none to carry. The studio's withholding is the reason that's correct.

The IRNR is yours to book. Stripe Tax doesn't calculate it, so no sync carries it. At each quarter end, post a journal entry: debit an expense account such as "Foreign income tax: Uruguay IRNR" for $214.56, credit a liability for the same amount. Clear the liability when you pay. Keep it out of the sales tax liability account, which should hold only what customers paid you.

The IVA payment. When the $393.36 leaves your account, reduce the tax liability by $393.36 and post any bank or transfer charges to bank fees, not to tax. The same liability account holds US sales tax and any other foreign tax from Stripe Tax, so note the Uruguayan slice each quarter. Our guide to reconciling the Stripe Tax report in QuickBooks covers the liability side, and the Stripe Tax itemized export entry lists the columns you filter on (country_code UY).

If you pay in pesos, the DGI receives a peso amount while your liability account holds dollars. Clear the dollar balance for the quarter and post the difference to the account your accountant uses for exchange gains and losses.

Common mistakes with Uruguayan tax on Stripe sales

• Registering because Stripe flagged Uruguay. Stripe's monitoring assumes every sale is taxable. The decree covers audiovisual content and intermediation. Check which side your product is on first.
• Ignoring Uruguay because you aren't "digital services." The reverse mistake. Video courses, streamed classes and downloadable films are squarely in Article 21 bis.
• Filing the IVA and forgetting the IRNR. The 12 percent income tax is due on the same revenue and never appears in Stripe.
• Registering late. The DGI expects registration before you start, up to 10 days ahead.
• Trusting one address. The decree accepts an IP address at signup or a billing address. Stripe picks one address in its own order.
• Pricing one Uruguayan customer in pesos under the dollar option. Every transaction in the return has to be in dollars.
• Using a general tax code. Stripe only calculates Uruguayan tax on digital product tax codes. See our product tax code entry.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do foreign SaaS companies have to charge Uruguayan VAT?

Not on the decree's text, unless the service is audiovisual content or online intermediation. Uruguay's law covers services consumed in the country over the internet, but Decree 144/018 limits the IVA rule to the audiovisual services in Article 21 bis and the intermediation services in Article 26 ter. Stripe Tax's Uruguay entry is wider and treats all digital products as taxable from the first sale, so check with a Uruguayan adviser before relying on the gap.

What is the VAT rate on digital services in Uruguay?

The basic IVA rate is 22 percent. For audiovisual services it applies to the full price. For intermediation where only one party is in Uruguay, the tax falls on 50 percent of the fee, an effective 11 percent. Providers in scope also owe the IRNR, a 12 percent income tax on their gross Uruguayan-source income, which Stripe Tax doesn't calculate.

Do I charge Uruguayan IVA to business customers?

No. Stripe Tax stops charging when the customer's RUC is stored as uy_ruc. For audiovisual services, the Uruguayan business is a withholding agent for both the IVA and the IRNR. For intermediation, withholding is suspended. Itemize the IVA on your invoices to Uruguayan businesses so they can deduct it.

How often do non-resident providers file and pay in Uruguay?

The IVA is paid quarterly with an annual return, and the IRNR is paid in quarterly advances with an annual settlement, on the DGI's calendar of due dates. Providers that document every sale in US dollars and have no other taxed activity in Uruguay can calculate and pay both taxes in dollars, and the choice holds for at least three fiscal years.

Does a foreign provider need a representative in Uruguay?

No, if its business in Uruguay is exclusively audiovisual or intermediation services and it has no physical presence. DGI Resolution 6409/018 lets it skip the representative as long as it constitutes a domicile under the Tax Code. Registration is filed with Form 0351 and a notarial certification, before activities begin.

Three Uruguayan details that decide your numbers

Uruguay's regime is narrower than Stripe's and heavier than it looks. Narrower, because the decree covers audiovisual content and intermediation, not every digital product, so a SaaS seller should check scope before registering. Heavier, because an in-scope seller owes the 12 percent IRNR on top of the 22 percent IVA, and only the IVA reaches Stripe's reports. And it is lighter on admin than most: no representative, home-country invoices, quarterly payments, and a dollar option that removes the currency step for sellers who price in USD.

Acodei syncs Stripe Tax into QuickBooks, so each Uruguayan quarter starts from the liability account instead of a spreadsheet. Start a free trial.