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Ask HN: How do you handle VAT / Sales Tax accounting as B2C SaaS?

97 points throw_1VJ51pMb | 1 comments | 08 Mar 25 08:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.295s | source

Hey! I run a B2C SaaS and I use Stripe for all of my sales (subscriptions).

I am looking to learn how others handle their VAT / Sales Tax filing.

I know that the standard answer would be to use Paddle / LemonSqueezy / Polar.sh, but I already have a lot of subscribers on Stripe which makes quick migration non-trivial.

I am especially looking for some reliable accounting companies / accountants that can register and file Sales Tax across US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc. (It does not have to be a global solution).

It's my understanding that solutions like Stripe Tax, Alavara, Quaderno, etc. only help collect the necessary data (which I consider the easier part, at least for digital goods), but do not handle the registration & filing (though I've learned that Quaderno will support filing Sales Tax in the US on your behalf soon).

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Some jurisdictions are relatively easy to handle (for example, one can handle whole EU by uploading a simple CSV [1] once a quarter and the CSV is easy to generate from Stripe's records).

But unfortunately there are tons of others that are much more complicated and scattered -- for example, due to the economic nexus laws in the US, I now have to file Sales Tax in each individual state where I am over the threshold (and many states have thresholds in low hundreds of transactions, so it's not hard to reach).

[1]: https://www.elster.de/bportal/helpGlobal?themaGlobal=osseust_import

[2]: If you do not feel comfortable commenting here, you can also reach out at z2qmk@pekoi.com (temporary email)

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jwr ◴[12 Mar 25 00:20 UTC] No.43338621[source]▶
EU SaaS solo owner here (about 10 years so far). I gave up on B2C entirely. It's just too much hassle. My accountant starts screaming in horror whenever I mention VAT MOSS. Whenever I looked into the rules, I saw a snake pit with moving snakes.

Additionally, B2C has tight margins, so eating into those hurts a lot.

Whenever I looked at companies like Quaderno, they looked great, but when I actually tried to use them, it turned out that their solutions are far from perfect and often incomplete or simply incorrect (e.g. I would not comply with local laws in my country). This is a common theme: even B2B invoicing, which is far simpler, is not implemented correctly by companies that say they do "invoicing". For example, Stripe invoicing won't do JPK_FA or KSeF in Poland (SAF-T reporting), which pretty much makes it a no-go. Many service providers are also incapable of producing bi-lingual invoices.

I ended up using Braintree (don't make that mistake) and now I'm migrating to Stripe — but for payments only. I have my own subscriptions and invoicing, and I use a local (Polish) company that has an invoicing API to produce JPK_FA/KSeF data.

If I were to even look at B2C, I wouldn't even consider doing anything on my own. I would go with Paddle, carefully considering my margins.

I realize this is not the answer you were looking for but it's a real-life data point.

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nik736 ◴[12 Mar 25 07:51 UTC] No.43340795[source]▶
Can you explain why VAT MOSS is such an issue? It saved me a lot of time so it was actually quite useful.
replies(1): >>43340906 #
1. omnimus ◴[12 Mar 25 08:15 UTC] No.43340906[source]▶
Me too. It solved most issues i had before it existed. Basically EU sales are easy now but the problem are other countries with digital tax.