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The screenshots look pretty, but more details would be helpful. From my experience digging into collecting VAT for digital goods, the issue is complex to say th

by wbond 11y ago

The screenshots look pretty, but more details would be helpful. From my experience digging into collecting VAT for digital goods, the issue is complex to say the least. Does is handle VAT exempt areas? Are VAT IDs validated? Does it allow not collecting VAT for businesses with a validated VAT ID? Does it collect multiple pieces of location proof for consumer purchases? For EU business purchases, does it deal with the invoicing regulations surrounding invoice contents or digital signatures? Does it handle collecting sales tax based on the state of incorporation for the seller?

Octobat 11y ago
Hi wbond, Sure it's a big mess, and at the moment our MVP was only functional and available for Europe and Australia. We differentiate digital goods and standard services, and compute VAT rates on-the-fly according to the following location proofs: - Customer billing address - Buyer IP - Credit Card country On more than 100k transactions, we never had 3 different locations, so our algorithm is for the moment pretty accurate. We also validate VAT numbers for B2B if asked to by our customer - we let him choose if doing so or not -. We handle invoicing regulations in Europe, for instance we convert the tax amount in the local currency at the European Bank exchange rate, and print the right annotations on the document. We store the previously quoted location proofs, and are able to provide the tax administration a SAF-MOSS XML file they can require during an audit. We have plans around digital signatures, it would be through a partnership, but as it was still not requested by our customers, it's still an ongoing feature. The main issue concerning our MVP is that we relied a lot on Stripe API calls, and the way our customers implemented it. Our plan with Checkout is to determine prior to the transaction which rate has to be applied, being able to retrieve easily all the evidence we need. Doing so, we also plan to support the US/CA cases, that are also tricky; and we will be able to help businesses collecting payments, being fully compliant without having to develop a backend.

by wbond 11y ago

Octobat 11y ago

Hi wbond, Sure it's a big mess, and at the moment our MVP was only functional and available for Europe and Australia. We differentiate digital goods and standard services, and compute VAT rates on-the-fly according to the following location proofs: - Customer billing address - Buyer IP - Credit Card country On more than 100k transactions, we never had 3 different locations, so our algorithm is for the moment pretty accurate. We also validate VAT numbers for B2B if asked to by our customer - we let him choose if doing so or not -. We handle invoicing regulations in Europe, for instance we convert the tax amount in the local currency at the European Bank exchange rate, and print the right annotations on the document. We store the previously quoted location proofs, and are able to provide the tax administration a SAF-MOSS XML file they can require during an audit. We have plans around digital signatures, it would be through a partnership, but as it was still not requested by our customers, it's still an ongoing feature. The main issue concerning our MVP is that we relied a lot on Stripe API calls, and the way our customers implemented it. Our plan with Checkout is to determine prior to the transaction which rate has to be applied, being able to retrieve easily all the evidence we need. Doing so, we also plan to support the US/CA cases, that are also tricky; and we will be able to help businesses collecting payments, being fully compliant without having to develop a backend.