VAT updates for SVOD channels in Mexico

Due to changes in Mexican laws, Roku has started to deduct 16% from all transactions to cover the Mexican VAT tax. The change went into effect on June 1, 2020 to comply with Mexico’s Value-Added Tax Law on digital services.  

For partners, Transaction Reporting will reflect the reduction for all transactions registered in the Mexico Channel Store in the “net_amount” column. For users, the change will be visible as a “Tax” line item in Roku invoices.   

Below are some available options if VAT is not currently included in your product pricing: 

1. Don’t make any changes: Partners are not required to increase their prices, but will incur a 16% decrease per transaction with this route.
2. Increase the price of your products:  

1. New Subscribers: Changing the price in the Developer Portal will increase the price accordingly for new subscribers ONLY.
2. Current Subscribers: Roku can assist with updating the price for the existing subscriber base. This option will require you to message your users to inform them of the increase and a future date when it will go into effect; thereby giving users the opportunity to cancel before their next billing cycle. Please align with your Roku contact on the timing of price changes for existing subscribers.
1. For channels that are available in multiple regions:  

• Regional Pricing: Products/prices can be managed by region if your channel includes logic to detect the channel store that’s associated with a user’s Roku account (refer to Get CounryCode () as Stringdocumentation) and display the corresponding product. 

Note: If your products aren’t region specific, any changes made to price will impact the price across all regions. (The 16% Mexico VAT tax will only be applied to Mexico Channel Store transactions.)