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Ask HN: Selling SaaS Internationally

8 points by kc10 ↗ HN
Hi, I am building a SaaS product(B2B) and now looking to build billing related functionality. My company is a Delaware corporation.

I am planning to use Stripe billing with Stripe Taxes which removes a lot of complexity and help monitor the tax compliance in US. Most states in the US seem to have certain threshold before I require to register for taxes to be compliant. However I am confused about selling internationally (esp. Europe) and my obligations for collecting VAT.

The documentation pretty much says "consult with a tax expert". I don't know if I should spend the money and time dealing with all the complexity before I launch the product. I am thinking there must be a simpler way to navigate this.

If you previously launched a startup, how did you handle the billing and tax complexity?

7 comments

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lucakiebel
I would not think about going international before building the product. Once you have paying local users you can consult with experts on the various international markets.
kc10
Thanks. That has been my approach as well. But worried that if I get a paying customer from another country paying trivial amounts and that would force me to do taxes and other process for that country.
jimkleiber
IANAL but I think countries have different thresholds before VAT applies, so as long as you're below those thresholds, maybe you're ok. But I as well have been wondering about this.

Update:

> Generally, non-resident (no permanent establishment) businesses that must register for VAT in another EU state face a nil registration threshold. A major exception to this rule is ecommerce sellers to consumers, where there are special EU distance selling VAT thresholds.

- https://www.avalara.com/vatlive/en/eu-vat-rules/eu-vat-numbe...

- https://www.avalara.com/vatlive/en/eu-vat-rules/distance-sel...

bckygldstn
Winging it with stripe is fine to get started quickly, but once you have a couple of customers switch to a Merchant of Record like Paddle.

On your end they work much like stripe: you get credit card input html and an api. But legally they are a reseller of your software so they handle all tax collection and payment, invoice formatting, plus some legal issues. In exchange they take a bigger cut than stripe, like 5%.

dbbk
I believe they actually use Stripe under the hood
dbbk
Paddle, end of discussion. You literally don't have to spend a single second worrying about this.