Oil and gas on Cook Inlet, salmon on the Kenai River, halibut out of Homer - and a borough sales tax that stacks on top of every city rate. Tides handles the books for Kenai Peninsula businesses. 100% remote. Clean every month.
No setup fees · Cancel anytime · 100% Remote
The Kenai Peninsula Borough runs from Cooper Landing down to Homer and across to Seward, and it holds five incorporated cities. Soldotna is the borough seat, Kenai is the largest city, Homer anchors the south end, and Seward sits on the eastern shore facing Resurrection Bay.
The economy has three legs. Cook Inlet oil and gas - the Nikiski industrial complex, the platforms out in the Inlet, and the service companies that support them. Fishing - the Kenai River king and sockeye runs, the Homer halibut fleet, and the commercial setnetters and driftnetters of Cook Inlet. And tourism, which for a few months a year floods the peninsula with anglers, cruise passengers at Seward, and RVs on the Sterling Highway.
For bookkeeping, one feature dominates everything: the borough sales tax stacks on top of the city rate. Get that wrong and you are under-collecting on every sale.
Wherever your business sits, we serve the whole area with the same level of service. We are 100% remote, so your exact location does not change anything about how we work.
The borough seat and the retail and services hub of the peninsula. Sterling Highway commerce, the hospital, and the Kenai River running right through town. City rate stacks with the 3% borough tax.
The largest city on the peninsula and the center of Cook Inlet oil and gas. Old Town Kenai, the Kenai Spur Highway, and the Nikiski industrial complex just up the road.
The Halibut Fishing Capital of the World. The Homer Spit, the charter fleet, a serious arts community - and the highest combined sales tax on the peninsula at roughly 7.85%.
Resurrection Bay, the Alaska SeaLife Center, the gateway to Kenai Fjords, and the southern terminus of the Alaska Railroad. A cruise port with an intense summer season.
The industrial heart of the peninsula - refining, LNG infrastructure, and the oilfield service companies that keep Cook Inlet production running. No city sales tax here.
Also serving Cooper Landing, Ninilchik, Kasilof, Seldovia, Kachemak, and every community across the Kenai Peninsula Borough.
Serving the peninsula means understanding stacked sales tax, a summer that carries the whole year, and an oil-and-gas industrial base sitting right next to a world-famous salmon river.
The Russians got here first - Fort Nikolaevskaia was established at Kenai in 1791, making it one of the oldest permanent settlements in Alaska. But the modern peninsula was made by two things: oil and fish.
The Swanson River oil discovery in 1957 was the first commercially significant oil find in Alaska, and it helped make the case for statehood two years later. Cook Inlet production followed, the platforms went up, and Nikiski became an industrial complex of refining and gas processing. The Inlet is a mature basin now, but it still anchors a substantial oilfield services economy of welders, machinists, boat operators, and logistics firms.
Fish is the other half. The Kenai River produces the largest king salmon on earth - the all-tackle world record, a 97-pounder, came out of it in 1985 - and the sockeye run brings a personal-use dipnet fishery every July that draws thousands of Alaskans to the river mouth. Homer calls itself the Halibut Fishing Capital of the World and has the charter fleet to back it up. Seward has cruise ships and the Alaska SeaLife Center. Between them, the peninsula gets a summer so intense that many businesses genuinely earn their entire year between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Alaska has no state sales tax and no state personal income tax — which is exactly why so many business owners get Alaska tax wrong. More than 100 local jurisdictions levy their own sales tax, and the rules change borough by borough and city by city.
The Kenai Peninsula has the most complicated sales tax setup of any borough in Alaska, because the borough rate stacks on top of the city rate. If you sell in more than one town on this peninsula, you are dealing with more than one rate - and most people get it wrong at least once.
Rates shown are as of 2026 and can change. Always confirm the current rate with the taxing jurisdiction before you rely on it. Tides keeps your books tax-ready and works alongside your CPA — we do not file returns for you.
Seven core services, all delivered remotely. Everything your business needs to stay financially clean and tax-ready year-round.
Our flagship service. Every transaction categorized, every account reconciled, and clean financial reports delivered to your inbox each month — without you lifting a finger. The financial foundation every Alaska business deserves.
Behind on your books? We clean up any backlog — whether it is 3 months or 3 years — so you can move forward with accurate, up-to-date records.
New business or inherited a mess? We configure QuickBooks, connect your accounts, and build a chart of accounts that actually makes sense for your industry — including landed cost and job costing where Alaska demands it.
Monthly reconciliation of every bank account and credit card — ensuring your books match your statements and no transactions fall through the cracks.
P&L statements, balance sheets, and cash flow reports delivered monthly in a format you can actually understand and act on.
We keep your AP and AR organized so you always know what is coming in, what is going out, and what is overdue.
We make sure your payroll expenses hit your books correctly and stay in sync with your payroll processor every pay period — including seasonal crews.
We understand the financial patterns of the industries that actually drive this economy — not a generic list copied from somewhere in the Lower 48.
Cook Inlet contracts, equipment depreciation, camp costs
Deposits, deferred revenue, a 100-day season
Fish tickets, crew shares, fisheries business tax
Bed tax, stacked sales tax, brutal seasonality
Job costing, city-line sales tax, short build season
COGS, tip payroll, a rate that changes town to town
Inventory, freight, Homer's ~7.85% combined rate
Clinics, consultants, agencies - clean monthly books
"We run halibut charters out of Homer and take deposits starting in January for trips that do not happen until July. Our old books showed a huge January and a terrible July, which is exactly backwards. Tides fixed the deferred revenue, straightened out the sales tax - I did not know Homer's combined rate was almost 8% - and now I can actually see whether the season worked."
It stacks. The Kenai Peninsula Borough levies a 3% sales tax borough-wide, and then each city adds its own rate on top. As of 2026 that means roughly 6% combined in Kenai and Soldotna, about 7.85% in Homer, and about 7% in Seward. In unincorporated areas like Nikiski or Sterling you collect only the 3% borough rate. Rates change - Soldotna has a change scheduled for January 1, 2027 - so always confirm with the borough.
Yes, and this is the number one sales tax mistake on the peninsula. Homer's combined rate is roughly 7.85% while Soldotna's is about 6%. If you have a booth at the Homer farmers market and a storefront in Soldotna, those are different rates on the same product. We set the books up so each location's sales are tracked separately and the right rate is applied to each.
Carefully, and deferred revenue is the key. Charter captains and guides take deposits months before the trip. Booking a February deposit as February revenue makes your winter look great and your summer look terrible - which is exactly backwards and makes it impossible to tell whether the season actually worked. We recognize revenue when you run the trip, and we build a cash view that shows you the winter runway.
Yes. Commercial fishing has its own bookkeeping vocabulary - fish tickets, crew shares, permit and IFQ costs, gear depreciation - and Alaska layers on a fisheries business tax and a fishery resource landing tax that most Lower 48 bookkeepers have never seen. We keep the records organized and tax-ready and work alongside your CPA on the filings.
No. If you do not have QuickBooks Online, we set it up as part of onboarding. If you already have an account, we connect to it and clean it up as needed. We also connect Puzzle.io for real-time dashboards and an instant snapshot of your books before regular monthly service begins.
Pricing is based on your monthly transaction volume, not your zip code. Most small businesses land between $395 and $895 per month. You get an exact quote during your free consultation - no guesswork, no setup fees.
Alaska does not border another state, so we do not pretend to serve one. We serve Alaska — from Southeast to the Interior to the Y-K Delta.
Schedule a free 15-minute consultation. Tell us about your business and we will give you a clear picture of where your books stand - stacked sales tax and all.
No setup fees · Cancel anytime · First month guaranteed
Official government resources for registering, filing, and staying compliant. Tides handles your books; these help with the rest.