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

97 points throw_1VJ51pMb | 2 comments | 08 Mar 25 08:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.42s | 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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dinkblam ◴[11 Mar 25 23:16 UTC] No.43338146[source]▶
i think this matter is confused because it contains two distinct things:

a.) accounting for the VAT owned to dozens different countries and

b.) "remitting": actually paying the VAT to the tax agencies of dozens different countries

many services help with part a.), but i haven't found a single one that helps with part b.) - you can only circumvent the issue by selling on a platform (like the different app stores or "FastSpring" or awful awful "Paddle") that do it for you because they are the merchant-of-record

our solution is to defer all payments for countries that collect VAT (EU plus UK plus like a dozen evil ones [1]) to FastSpring (which collects AND remits VAT), while selling to countries that don't collect VAT via Stripe.

this works well if you are a small company and you fall below the "VAT thresholds" in place by most countries, but if you are big and breach most thresholds this solution is less effective.

[1] AE, AL, AO, BH, BY, CH, CL, CO, CR, DZ, EC, GE, IN, KE, KR, MD, MX, RS, RU, SA, TJ, UG, VN

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jflessau ◴[11 Mar 25 23:42 UTC] No.43338359[source]▶
Can you elaborate on your bad experiences with Paddle?
replies(1): >>43344252 #
1. dinkblam ◴[12 Mar 25 15:26 UTC] No.43344252[source]▶
the possibility of just blocking your account without warning or reason - if you only have the single payment provider you are fucked.

after they did obviously the #1 priority was replacing them and making sure to have multiple providers.

did you also notice how they just deleted their github project because it contained so many comments by their angry customers?

replies(1): >>43352119 #
2. CER10TY ◴[13 Mar 25 11:07 UTC] No.43352119[source]▶
This happened to plenty of people with Stripe as well.

Doesn't mean Paddle isn't a good place to start - but as you get bigger, you should probably look at other solutions as well, to de-risk your payments infra. It's just that at the start it's too expensive, even in B2B, to think about multiple payment providers to spread risk.