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SaaS based in Finland, customers potentially from anywhere. Question about taxes
Hi all!
I am building a SaaS and was thinking of using Stripe's hosted Checkout and the new Customer portal since this would save me a lot of time from building everything myself, and I could launch earlier. However my understanding is that Stripe doesn't do anything about taxes, so I have to take care of that myself. I know that there are some partner services like Octobat that calculate taxes and integrate with Stripe, but if I understood correctly this isn't enough. I have learnt that you have to file and pay taxes to authorities in various countries. Some countries have thresholds, others don't. Countries like India even require to register in the country before doing any business there. It sounds like a mess to me...
I'm based in Finland, so in the EU. What should I do to accept payments from anywhere and be tax-compliant with every country?
I found a few services like Paddle that seem to handle everything for me and act as resellers/merchant of record. They do everything about taxes and I don't have to do anything at all. However my SaaS is a CMS that lets users create their sites and Paddle's AUP (https://paddle.com/support/aup/) says mentions web hosting services as potentially not supported/allowed. I have sent a message asking if my SaaS would be considered hosting but I haven't received any reply.
Are there other options I should be looking into? Generally speaking - for those of you who have a SaaS based in the EU - which payment solution did you go for and how do you manage taxes in the various countries if you don't use something like Paddle?
Thanks a lot in advance for any help!
- svennek 6y agoSave yourself from a world of hurt and ask an official/legal accountant in your home-country. It will cost you something, likely between 500 to 1000 EUR, but trust me, you will regret doing stuff with real legal ramifications based on "random people on the internet"'s advice... worst case if you do something illegal is jail time and tens of thousands of EUR in fines! A real and legal accountant in your country even has insurance, so if their advise is bad (which in itself is highly unlikely) you will be covered... Also, if you can prove that you had professional help, the authorities will likely be much more lenient if you screw something up. I have been running my own businesses in Denmark for the past decade and a half and could not even phantom doing it without my accountant on the side...
- svennek 6y agoAlso them being a "unaffiliated" third-party changes the default assumption when something is done wrong from "cheater" to "sloppy", massive improvement when your counterparty is the IRS (or whatever they are called in your country).
- SkyLinx 6y agoHi! Thanks for your reply. What I am mostly concerned about is that I would have to do something more than just providing reports including sales tax to my accountant, like interact directly with each country's authorities or anything like that. I have just contacted my wife's accountant asking about this but I was hoping to hear more about other people's experiences with this kind of stuff. Thanks again!
- svennek 6y agoFor the EU you can likely fall under the "One Stop" regulation: Here is a link (in english) from the danish tax auths, the regulation is EU so also available in Finland, I just cant find a good link https://skat.dk/skat.aspx?oid=2244397 https://skat.dk/skat.aspx?oid=2244397