You can use a MoR payment provider such as paddle or spring which handle tax compliance for you globally. They will pay tax and take liability on behalf of you.
They charge 5% per transaction.
They charge 5% per transaction.
I would expect that MoR's have their own set of issues. As they become the seller. So they are liable for the product quality, safety etc.
So I don't think signing up and working with them will be very easy. Especially if your product is not as standardized as an ebook or something.
So if you use those, I would love to hear about your experiences. What you sell, how the signup was and how the relationship with them is going.
Last time I looked at the Paddle signup flow, I already had two issues I could not resolve:
- What product category my product falls under. None of their categories seemed to fit.
- How to sign up before the site is live. Paddle wants to look at the site. So do you have to build a dummy that works up until the point where the user buys something and then it says "Sorry, we are still looking for a payment solution"?
Paddle only replied with nonsensical semi-automated messages to my questions. And when I answered and asked for a real answer by a human, I never got a reply.
https://www.paddle.com/help/start/account-verification/what-...
https://fastspring.com/tax-management/
You end up paying more to them than Stripe would charge, but it might be worth it if you just don't want to deal with that administrative headache.
(I'm not running a SaaS, but shareware / downloadable software companies have been dealing with international taxes for 15 years or more now, since the digital EU tax laws came in. The idea of global consumption taxes wasn't really a thing until then, so you only had to follow your own local tax rules in the early-mid 2000s.)
Paddle checked my site & product 3 times to make sure it complies with their requirements (an important aspect in my case was that my app creation process is automatic and not done by hand). I always got in touch with a human quickly, both during the account setup and later when I needed help (through chat or sellers@paddle.com). In fact I'd say it's probably the best support experience I've ever had.
Regarding your sign-up questions: - Back when I signed up there were no such options but now I'm in "Standard Digital Goods" which seems to be the catch-all for everything that doesnt fit into one of the more specific categories. - I had integrated Stripe and Paypal (never again) already, so I didn't have that problem. You could use a "Contact Us" placeholder to manually process payments I guess. If you immediately apply to Paddle then, you shouldn't have to keep that up for long anyways.