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Comment by wbond | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that I am now subject to collecting taxes for a country that I have nothing to do with. I have never set foot in an EU country, I don't choose to sell to EU customers, they just come to my US-based website and pay in USD. I comply with all of my local tax laws. I can be involved with my local government and affect change. I can't do that in the EU.

The way this is all written, I'll actually have to do work to BLOCK customers from the EU, or face legal issues. It seem more reasonable to require that the people who LIVE in the EU deal with their own local taxes.

Can you imagine having to keep track of tax laws of 195 countries? I'm sure a company like Amazon can deal with that no problem, but self-employed people developing software, music or ebooks are basically screwed and now need to waste a ton of their time trying to figure out exactly how to jump through the ever-changing hoops.

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What legal issues? Will the EU take you to court? Will they direct the (say) UK police force to come to your business and sieze property to pay back debts? This isn't going to happen.

Well, if I choose to visit the EU in the future, I presume I could face issues related to tax avoidance?

They could prevent payment services from allowing EU customers to pay you.

Why don't you just charge more? Let them have their welfare state, just make sure they are ones paying for it.

I thought about that issue, but then I would need to detect the country a user is coming from before I show them a price. So now I am into geo-ip for basic web visitors, and even then sometimes the price will be wrong.

If I do it at checkout time, I am performing sort of a bait-and-switch with customers, which would leave a sour taste in my mouth.

I thought about the idea of adding a surcharge for EU customers since I need to deal with all of this. I don't know enough about international tax law to know if this is ok.

However, the issue is really that it is taking up time from providing a product. Sure, I could charge more, but unlikely enough to hire someone to deal with the issues. Instead it would more likely negatively affect the number of licenses I sell, which would again lead to me probably not being able to afford to pay someone to deal with it for me.

In the end it comes down to the fact that the EU is making it significantly harder for small companies or individuals to sell digital goods. In the end we are talking about every person who writes an ebook, sells some piece of software or sells digital music having to deal with these issues.

It seems the EU is stacking the deck against small companies and instead favoring larger organizations that can afford full-time accountants. Or favoring large companies that then sell VAT services to the individual.

>It seems the EU is stacking the deck against small companies and instead favoring larger organizations that can afford full-time accountants. Or favoring large companies that then sell VAT services to the individual.

This is a common effect and often an intended one when it comes to regulatory capture and the raising of trade barriers to protect those in power.

Charge more at checkout, EU citizens will either understand or they won't, but they are the ones that need to confront their own laws passed by their politicians.

" I would need to detect the country a user is coming from before I show them a price"

You mean, like anywhere in the US where the price shown is without tax and you calculate it afterwards?

Maybe I am missing something but how could you be subject to collecting taxes for a country that you have nothing to do with? AFAIK, EU laws apply to EU entities. If you are not EU citizen and do not own any EU-registered company, how could they have jurisdiction over you?

There are no EU laws. Member states create laws from EU directives. These laws often apply to everyone outside the member country. In practise these laws generally don't matter outside the member state, as it would be nearly impossible to enforce them. But the principle does exist, and the laws sometimes are enforced.

I was using the simplification "EU laws" as a set of laws of the member states (as a citizen of one of those states I know there are no EU laws per se) and what I was asking was how could anyone who has nothing to do with any of the EU states be forced to comply with any of their laws? Why would anyone outside care about them any more than they care about sharia laws enforced in some countries?

The US is the same. Software sales into the US (income from a US source) are subject to US taxes. There's some rules about what exactly constitutes a US source, but from my layman reading it sounds like if you market in the US, you may be required to pay.

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