Hi,
I am building a SaaS product(B2B) and now looking to build billing related functionality. My company is a Delaware corporation.<p>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.<p>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.<p>If you previously launched a startup, how did you handle the billing and tax complexity?
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.<p>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%.
If it's a SAAS, I would use a merchant of record payment provider such as paddle.<p><a href="https://www.paddle.com/blog/what-is-merchant-of-record" rel="nofollow">https://www.paddle.com/blog/what-is-merchant-of-record</a><p>They handle all the compliance for you in different countries.
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.