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0 pointsolalonde2y ago0 comments

I've developed a niche app designed to assist individuals in the Dominican Republic and potentially others outside the US who purchase from platforms like Amazon US and eBay US in retrieving sales tax refunds. The way it operates is by accessing data from your Amazon purchase history and your courier or forwarding service. From this, it auto-generates an email to Amazon to reclaim the sales tax. Initially, I aimed to introduce a commission-based model from these refunds, but this aspect is still in the pipeline.

The tool did function for a short while, during which it successfuly reclaimed a few hundred dollars in refunds. However, it broke when a courier site introduced reCAPTCHA at their login and Amazon made UI changes to their order page. I'm now at a crossroads, contemplating whether the upkeep required to ensure the app keeps working is worth my while, given how niche the potential market is. I am not sure if I can make realistically make money from this. Would love to hear insights or suggestions.

For reference, you can check it out at https://taxrefunder.io, although the core functionality is down at the moment.

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klntsky2y ago

You absolutely can. I recommend selling it as subscription service at launch, with a free demo. Less calculations/simpler workflows. If it allows to save $hundreds, people will be happy to pay $tens. A lot of "lifehack" websites accept paid content, you even have a chance of getting free advertising.

Why isn't your product global from the start?

olalondeOP2y ago

> A lot of "lifehack" websites accept paid content, you even have a chance of getting free advertising.

Thanks for the suggestion.

> Why isn't your product global from the start?

I'm not sure I understand the question but mostly because I have to add support for shipping forwarders (e.g. write scrapers for them) and right now, the two ones I am personally using only ship to the Dominican Republic.

I also don't know if people actually do this outside the Dominican Republic. It only solves a problem for people who ship from the US through a shipping forwarder. If you ask Amazon (and other e-commerces) to ship internationally, they usually don't charge a sales tax in the first place. I don't really know how common it is for people to ship through forwarders outside the DR to be honest. It's a big thing here because "last-mile delivery" is unreliable and it's easier to go at a shipping forwarder's local office to pick up packages.

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