I wonder how much rep, has to do with who decides to up vote? If you see Jon Skeet answer, people will up vote him more than the average user with 5k. This is a subjective opinion of course.
So if this product does not file VATS in 50+ countries (seems impossible anyways) and it does not actually pay these fees. This product is solving a solution that no online retailer should even bother with.
Honestly, until congress fixes interstate commerce and that terrible Wayfair decision, until the VAT process is drastically simplified/unified, nobody should collect or pay these fees to anyone. When they come for it, sue.
The bottom line is this maddening confusion isn't worth dealing with for the business or the state/country.
Luckily, my home state of Virginia has exclusions. From what I understand, until congress acts, more lawsuits need to happen from companies challenging states to pay these bullshit taxes. VAT is also a terrible burden.
Yeah, it sucks. However, not all goods, not all states even have an existence of a nexus. Virginia specifically exempts sales taxes of digital products delivered electronically, such as software, downloaded music, ringtones, and reading materials.
The basic rule for collecting sales tax from online sales is: If your business has a physical presence, or “nexus”, in a state, you must collect applicable sales taxes from online customers in that state. If you do not have a physical presence, you generally do not have to collect sales tax for online sales. In the court ruling that allowed this, it was determined that Wayfair did have a nexus in those states. Not all businesses operate that way and there are a lot of gray areas.
It's quite obvious both PayPal and Stripe need to account for these terribly burdensome tax laws going into effect next month. The thresholds for most companies (UK excluded) was previously enough for most international sellers to not have to worry about filing for a VAT in multiple foreign countries. However, now they are making it even more burdensome by removing these thresholds entirely. No USA businesses selling small amounts of good are going to deal with that burden. If PayPal and Stripe can't deliver, that VAT ain't being paid by the majority of online shops. This is a case of them trying to go after the big guys and screwing the small. Good job on Stripe. PayPal needs to do the same. https://www.avalara.com/vatlive/en/vat-news/eu-2021-one-stop...
I do account for that, but honestly I don't make the international sales to worry about it. UK is the one exception for that. The rules are being a bit more simplified starting July 1 of this year. VAT is a disaster for all businesses. This is a case of going after the big guys and screwing the little guys in the process. Luckily, 70% of my revenue is in the USA and on top of that my company is based in business friendly Virginia.
I've been using Stripe for years for my website, codehawke.com. Once you get over a certain amount of revenue and or sales transactions, they file 1099-K directly with the US IRS, they won't miss your failure to report that. I'm not sure if this is new, or I reached some new threshold? They are definitely in communication with the IRS at this point. PayPal does the same thing.
I created codehawke.com architecture from scratch to avoid hosting my content on other people's platforms. I make way more money than with platforms like Udemy. I think we should all be moving away from other people's platforms and tools.