Sales tax and VAT software for Wave
In Wave you create each sales tax by hand and add it to an invoice line. That works while you sell in one place. Commenda picks up where it stops: measuring your Wave transactions against thresholds in all 50 states, registering you, and filing across 70+ countries.
Trusted by global businesses
Monitor your global exposure
Nexus and thresholds appear nowhere in Wave's tax documentation. Commenda measures your Wave transactions against economic and physical thresholds in all 50 states and 70+ countries, and notifies you at 80%.
Calculate tax without typing rates
In Wave a sales tax is a rate you enter yourself, with an effective date each time it changes. Commenda works out the rate from the ship-to address, down to county, city, and district.
Register, file, and remit worldwide
Wave narrowed to the United States and Canada in November 2020 and refers everyone else to a partner. Commenda registers and files across 70+ countries.
Coverage comparison
What does Wave handle, and what comes back to you?
Wave's figures come from its own Help Center pages on adding a sales tax, how tax is calculated, the sales tax report, recording a payment, payroll tax filings, and users outside the US and Canada, checked on July 30, 2026.
Working out the right rate
- Wave
- Not handled. You enter every rate yourself and pick it per invoice line
- Commenda
- Calculated per jurisdiction from the ship-to address, on every transaction
Knowing where you owe
- Wave
- Not handled. Nexus and thresholds appear nowhere in its tax documentation
- Commenda
- Economic and physical thresholds in 50 states and 70+ countries, with alerts at 80%
Registrations for collecting tax
- Wave
- Not handled. Your tax number is a text field on the tax you created
- Commenda
- Permits in all 50 states, EU VAT with OSS and IOSS, and GST across APAC and Canada
Filing your returns
- Wave
- Partly. It files payroll tax in all 50 states. Sales tax is not in scope
- Commenda
- Sales tax, VAT, and GST filed across 50 states and 70+ countries
Remitting what you collected
- Wave
- Not handled. You record the payment yourself once you have made it
- Commenda
- Tracked per jurisdiction, on every filing
Exemption certificates
- Wave
- Not documented. Its sales tax help section is five articles, none on certificates
- Commenda
- Collected, validated, stored, and applied automatically where valid
Selling outside the US and Canada
- Wave
- Not supported. Wave narrowed to those two countries in November 2020
- Commenda
- 70+ countries from one platform, including EU VAT, UK VAT, and Canadian GST/HST
| Wave |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Working out the right rate | Not handled. You enter every rate yourself and pick it per invoice line | Calculated per jurisdiction from the ship-to address, on every transaction |
| Knowing where you owe | Not handled. Nexus and thresholds appear nowhere in its tax documentation | Economic and physical thresholds in 50 states and 70+ countries, with alerts at 80% |
| Registrations for collecting tax | Not handled. Your tax number is a text field on the tax you created | Permits in all 50 states, EU VAT with OSS and IOSS, and GST across APAC and Canada |
| Filing your returns | Partly. It files payroll tax in all 50 states. Sales tax is not in scope | Sales tax, VAT, and GST filed across 50 states and 70+ countries |
| Remitting what you collected | Not handled. You record the payment yourself once you have made it | Tracked per jurisdiction, on every filing |
| Exemption certificates | Not documented. Its sales tax help section is five articles, none on certificates | Collected, validated, stored, and applied automatically where valid |
| Selling outside the US and Canada | Not supported. Wave narrowed to those two countries in November 2020 | 70+ countries from one platform, including EU VAT, UK VAT, and Canadian GST/HST |
Calculate taxes globally on Wave using Commenda
In Wave a sales tax is something you create. You give it a name, a number, and a rate, and you set an effective date each time that rate changes. Commenda works the rate out from the ship-to address instead, down to county, city, and district. There is nothing to type in and nothing to update when a jurisdiction moves its rate.
Track your global exposure from Wave
Wave reports on the taxes you set up. Your obligation follows the states you sold into. Most states start an obligation at $100,000 of sales or 200 transactions in twelve months. Commenda measures the same Wave transactions against each state's own rule and notifies you at 80%, before you cross. A short questionnaire covers physical presence, because a contractor or stored inventory never shows up on an invoice.
Automatically remit transactions around the world
Wave's sales tax report gives you tax collected, tax paid, and net tax owing for each tax you created, as a CSV or a PDF. Filing it is your job, and so is the payment. Commenda builds the return itself from the same transactions, then files across all 50 states, EU VAT with OSS, and GST in Canada and APAC. Remittance is tracked per jurisdiction.
Manage your customers and exemptions in one place
Wave's whole sales tax help section is five articles, and exemption certificates are not one of them. Exempting a customer means leaving the tax off their invoice and keeping the certificate somewhere else. Commenda collects them through a portal your customers upload to, validates each one, and applies it automatically in the states where it is valid. Each customer record carries the system it came from.
Consolidation
Why does Wave not know your total exposure?
Wave holds the books for a lot of small businesses, and its sales tax feature does one job well: it records the taxes you told it about. The number it cannot produce is where you owe, because that depends on states you may never have set a tax up for.
Wave stops at the US and Canada. Your customers may not.
Wave announced in November 2020 that it would focus exclusively on the US and Canada, and told users outside those countries that compliance could not be guaranteed outside the supported regions. One digital product sold to a consumer in Germany can create a VAT obligation there. EU One Stop Shop lets you register in a single member state and file for all 27 from it. Wave has no path to either.
Most of your revenue probably does not start in Wave
A Stripe checkout, an Etsy or Amazon listing, and a storefront all land in Wave as records after the fact. Tax a marketplace already collected is not yours to file again. Commenda connects each source directly, across 100+ integrations, and consolidates into one ledger tagged by ship-to state. That produces one exposure figure per state instead of one per tool.
Not charging tax does not keep a sale off the threshold
In many states an exempt or resale sale still counts toward the economic nexus threshold. So does a sale into a state where your product is not taxable. Once you cross, you register and file, often a zero return, even where nothing is owed. Wave cannot surface any of this, because it reports on the taxes you created rather than the states you sold into.
The registrations should outlive the accounting system
Small businesses change accounting systems. Your registrations, exposure history, and certificates sit in Commenda rather than in the ledger, so a switch changes a data connection and nothing about your compliance record. We handle migrations to and from other accounting tools, bringing historical data across in a clean structure. You can also check a rate against our sales tax calculator at any point, whichever system your books live in.
What it costs
What does Wave cost, and what tax does it cover?
Wave publishes its prices in full, which makes the arithmetic easy. The point of this table is not that Wave is expensive. It is that the list is complete and sales tax is not on it. The one tax service Wave sells is payroll.
| What you pay for | Wave's published price |
|---|---|
| Accounting, invoicing, and as many sales taxes as you want to create | $0 on the Starter Plan, with unlimited bookkeeping records, invoices, and estimates |
| Automated bookkeeping and bank transaction import | $190 USD per year on the Pro Plan, billed annually. Wave's own page shows that as $38 less than paying monthly |
| Digital receipt capture | $8 per month or $72 per year as a Starter add-on. Included with the Pro Plan |
| Card payments on an invoice | 2.9% plus $0.60 per card transaction on Starter, 3.4% plus $0.60 for Amex. Pro drops the $0.60 for the first ten transactions each month |
| A bookkeeper and monthly financial statements | Wave Advisors from $149 per month, which includes Pro Plan features and onboarding if you are switching from other accounting software |
| Payroll tax payments and filings in all 50 states | Payroll from $40 per month. Wave states filings are part of the full access payroll subscription, covering federal 940, 941, 943, 944, W-2 and state payroll tax. Not sales tax |
| Sales tax registration, filing, or remittance | Not sold at any price. Wave's sales tax help section runs to five articles, and none of them covers registering or filing |
| Selling outside the United States and Canada | Not supported. Wave refers those users to its partner Zoho Books, and states that compliance could not be guaranteed outside the supported regions |
Accounting, invoicing, and as many sales taxes as you want to create
$0 on the Starter Plan, with unlimited bookkeeping records, invoices, and estimates
Automated bookkeeping and bank transaction import
$190 USD per year on the Pro Plan, billed annually. Wave's own page shows that as $38 less than paying monthly
Digital receipt capture
$8 per month or $72 per year as a Starter add-on. Included with the Pro Plan
Card payments on an invoice
2.9% plus $0.60 per card transaction on Starter, 3.4% plus $0.60 for Amex. Pro drops the $0.60 for the first ten transactions each month
A bookkeeper and monthly financial statements
Wave Advisors from $149 per month, which includes Pro Plan features and onboarding if you are switching from other accounting software
Payroll tax payments and filings in all 50 states
Payroll from $40 per month. Wave states filings are part of the full access payroll subscription, covering federal 940, 941, 943, 944, W-2 and state payroll tax. Not sales tax
Sales tax registration, filing, or remittance
Not sold at any price. Wave's sales tax help section runs to five articles, and none of them covers registering or filing
Selling outside the United States and Canada
Not supported. Wave refers those users to its partner Zoho Books, and states that compliance could not be guaranteed outside the supported regions
Figures verified on July 30, 2026 against Wave pricing, Wave payroll tax filings, Wave's sales tax help section and changes for users outside the US and Canada.
From the field
Trusted by businesses across the globe
“The platform works exactly the way I need it to. I have one team member who manages all of our exemption certificates, and that functionality has been particularly efficient for us. It allows him to handle everything seamlessly, making the handoff significantly easier.”
VP of Finance, TRX
Which sales tax software fits a business running Wave?
If you sell in one state and file one return, Wave's report and your state portal are enough, and a tool on top is overhead. The comparison starts to matter once a second jurisdiction appears. We rank the alternatives on coverage, ratings, and real pricing, and we say where each one wins.
More sales tax resources
Guides from the Commenda team on getting started, calculating rates, registration costs, and Canadian GST.
Frequently asked questions
Probably not yet, and we would rather say so. One state means one registration, one rate to keep in Wave, and one return you can file yourself on the state portal from Wave's sales tax report. That is a reasonable setup and a tool on top of it is overhead. The picture changes when a second jurisdiction appears. Each extra state adds a rate to maintain, its own filing frequency to track, and a return that is due whether or not you owe anything. Somewhere between two and a handful of jurisdictions, doing it by hand starts costing more than it saves.
Yes, but not sales tax. Wave states that it offers tax payments and filings in all 50 US states, and that these are part of its full access payroll subscription. That covers federal forms 940, 941, 943, 944 and W-2, plus state payroll filings and new hire reporting, with household employers filing IRS Schedule H excluded. Sales tax is not in scope. For sales tax you get a report, and paying it is a bookkeeping entry: an expense transaction categorized as Sales Tax Payment To Government, split across taxes if there is more than one. Commenda prepares, files, and remits the sales tax, VAT, and GST returns themselves.
Nothing on the tax. Wave announced in November 2020 that it would focus exclusively on the US and Canada, and told users outside those regions that compliance could not be guaranteed there, pointing them to its partner Zoho Books. A single business-to-consumer digital sale into the EU can create a VAT obligation in the customer's country. EU One Stop Shop lets you register for VAT in one member state and file for cross-border sales across all 27 plus Northern Ireland from that single registration, and for sellers based outside the EU we usually recommend the Netherlands or Ireland. Commenda handles the registration and the filings.
Possibly. In many states an exempt or resale sale still counts toward the economic nexus threshold, and so does a sale into a state where your product is not taxable. Once you cross, you usually have to register and file, often a zero return, even when the tax due is nil. Wave cannot show you this, because it reports on the taxes you set up rather than the states you sold into. Commenda counts every transaction against each state's rule and flags which states include exempt sales in the total.
Not as a record. Wave's sales tax help section is five articles: creating a tax, recoverable versus non-recoverable, compound tax, how tax is calculated, and how to record a payment. Certificates are not among them. Exempting a customer therefore means not adding the tax to their invoice and keeping the certificate somewhere outside the software. Commenda collects certificates through a portal your customers upload to, validates each one on upload, applies it automatically in the states where it is valid, and chases expiries before an auditor finds them. Multi-state SST and MTC forms are accepted alongside single-state ones.
Custom integration support for your business
Small businesses run their books in different shapes, and Wave is usually one part of a stack alongside a payment processor, a marketplace, and a spreadsheet. We map how yours works, connect the sources that carry your sales, and set the scope so nothing gets counted twice.
Indirect Tax
Monitor nexus exposure, register, file, and remit sales tax and VAT in one platform. Commenda keeps you compliant across 100+ jurisdictions.
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