Software developers selling apps and subscriptions
A platform in another country collects from your users, takes a cut, and pays you monthly. Here is what your side looks like.
You built something. It sells through an app store or a subscription platform. Users pay the platform, the platform takes its share, and once a month a payment arrives from abroad.
There is no invoice you issued, no client to chase, and no obvious paper trail. That is convenient, and it is also why developers in this position often have no idea what their records should look like.
The money is business income
Whether the money comes from one client or ten thousand users, income earned from selling software or subscriptions is business income. The absence of a client relationship does not change that.
A developer earning this way is expected to be registered in their own name, to keep records, and to file on their own schedule. The platform is not doing any of this for you, and the fact that it is based abroad means it never will.
Gross, not net
The most common error: recording the monthly payout as your income.
What users paid is your revenue. The platform's commission is a cost. The payout is what is left after the cost has been taken, and building your books from it hides both numbers.
This matters for two reasons beyond accuracy. Thresholds tend to look at revenue rather than profit, and platform commissions are substantial, often a large slice. A developer measuring only payouts may be considerably larger than they think by the measures that count.
Every platform provides statements showing gross sales, fees, taxes it may have handled, refunds, and the net payout. Download them monthly. They are the only record of the gross figures, and platforms limit how far back you can go.
Foreign currency and foreign platforms
Payments arriving in another currency are still your income, converted sensibly and consistently. Pick a reasonable approach to conversion and apply it the same way every month rather than choosing whichever rate flatters the period.
There is a second question worth asking specifically rather than assuming: how sales to users in different countries are treated, and what the platform has already handled on your behalf. Platforms increasingly collect and remit certain taxes in the user's country, which is their obligation rather than yours, but it affects what the numbers on your statement mean.
Recurring revenue has its own timing
Subscriptions are money received now for service delivered over time. An annual subscription paid in January covers twelve months of access.
Treating the whole year's payment as though it were earned the day it arrived flatters the month it lands and empties the months that follow. It also misstates what you owe your users, which is real: if they cancel, some of that money may be refundable.
Refunds and chargebacks are the other half. They reduce your revenue in the period they happen, and a developer who never records them is overstating income.
Practical footing
Download platform statements monthly, and keep them.
Record gross sales, platform fees, refunds, and payouts as four different things.
Keep your costs: hosting, tools, subscriptions, contractors, equipment, and the machines you develop on, which are long-lived assets.
Ask specifically about how foreign platform sales are treated in your situation rather than assuming they sit outside everything.
Earning from an app store or subscription platform and unsure what to record? Ask AskOnward for a plain answer from the official BIR rules, so a hands-off revenue stream still has records behind it.
This article is for general information and is not affiliated with the government. For official forms and the latest rules, see the Bureau of Internal Revenue at bir.gov.ph.