It's not really that hard. I only know the situation when selling from Germany, but it should be similar in other countries. Basically, you don't have to pay t

It's not really that hard. I only know the situation when selling from Germany, but it should be similar in other countries. Basically, you don't have to pay taxes in other countries, you only pay taxes in the country your company resides in (of course there are some exceptions, you should get a lawyer etc., but this is what I've heard in a couple of cases). If you make less then a certain amount, I believe 17500 € / year, you count as a "small entrepreneur" and are not treated like a business, but as a private person. You can sell and buy what you like and don't pay additional sales tax to the state. You implicitly pay 7-19% sales tax when buying goods just like any other customer. If you are a "real" business, you don't have to pay the sales tax when buying stuff (raw material). In practice, you can deduct it from your taxes. You have to pay sales tax directly to the state for things you create and sell. This is why it's also called value added tax, because its a tax on the value your company added to the "material". In practice, if you are a software company, you'll just have to pay a certain percentage of your income in taxes, it's not really complicated. The interesting part is when you do business with abroad. It is really complicated to do the customs procedures for all the different countries, but it is much easier when you only sell digital goods, and/or sell directly to customers. In most cases, you just pay the 19% tax to the German government, and sell your product to the customer, and youre fine. There are ways to avoid the sales tax when selling to other countries, but AFAIK you have to pay some customs fees and it starts getting complicated. I only know the case when importing things to Germany, in that case someone has to pay an additional import sales tax, besides the customs, but the taxes in the country of origin can usually be waived. In case something goes wrong here, usually the selling company isn't held liable, but the goods are stuck in customs and the customer has to pay the import tax. This is frequently a problem for american companies trying to sell stuff to Germany, e.g. Pebble and Ouya had that problem. It's a nuisance, but the customs agencies are generally very cooperative and will tell you exactly what they want you to pay :-).