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Comment by PythonicAlpha | Hacker News Reader

In the EU, the sales tax now (I think, since this year) must be paid to the country, the buyer comes from (before, the sellers country was decisive). Also the height of the tax depends on this. So, at least in Europe there are plenty of small companies that could need such a thing, at least as long they don't have a payment-provider that handles the sales-tax for them.

I myself, could also be interested, but I think, I will leave that to my payment-provider ... (ugly, EU!)

Edit: Ok, I should not, but why the downvote, please? When I wrote something wrong, than please explain!

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You almost certainly don't want to be using IP geolocation to compute sales tax, rather some kind of billing address explicitly provided by the customer.

In that case, the customer could cheat. I am not totally sure about the current discussion on that, but the problem is, that you definitively can not rely on the address given of the customer, because in this case the customer will always give a country with the lowest sales tax. Also you must provide proofs for the location. The IP address is IMHO (and not only my opinion) better and will be more likely be recognized as proof instead of relying solely on some customer input.

But, you (because you are so sure about the best method) by sure know, that the laws are explicitly for non-physical goods, where no delivery-address must be provided, right?

Here is a link, how one company is doing it (forget about government information, they seldom go so much in details!): https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2014/12/08/consensus-and...

They use the IP address to validate the user given address and for later proof.

BTW: Downvoting all the time does not help the discussion. I try to discuss this topic seriously and I was bringing some very relevant topic here, and am constantly downvoted. (It is not my fault, that the EU came up with such laws, and provide no useful guide how to implement it!)

In Denmark, at least, billing address is standard for non-physical goods as well. It's validated via the payment method, typically credit card or bank transfer. It's possible to cheat this, too, but harder than just making up a fake address. Afaik none of the main online sellers in DK are relying on IP address currently, in part because accuracy is not good enough, and in part because people traveling across borders is common (many residents of Malmö, for example, have Danish IP addresses during the day and Swedish IP addresses at night).

You can not validate all payment methods by country (or do you want to limit the methods provided?). Also nobody hinders you from creating a bank account in a different EU country.

That "all" are doing it, does not guarantee, that one time a judge or tax controller will come and argue with you that you have no proofs at all. In this case, you are really bust, because the new law also says, that you are accountable for the tax to all the countries tax authorities. Much fun, when you get citations from different EU countries.

(Don't say it is not realistic: There are cases already public, where British shops got claims from remote EU countries, because of tax differences of <10 Euro).

And as long the EU does provide laws that are hard to implement in real life (only in the minds of the politicians they are simple) and nobody says how to implement them, it is better to collect all proof you can get.

A parallel poster posted an official link from the British Government:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-supplying-dig...

There is clearly stated, that IP information is one of the proofs accepted for the country determination.

So, maybe next time, please first ask before judge.

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