100% – We've discussed the idea of accountability buddies before and there was definitely some interest. I haven't gotten around to facilitating this, but I'm hoping having a place for new members to introduce themselves will be a good first step.
I'm not an accountant, so take this with a grain of salt but I believe most small, European companies only charge VAT to local customers and those within the EU.
Anyone outside (U.S., etc) doesn't get charged. You either don't need to charge VAT or report taxes until you hit a certain revenue threshold, or these local tax authorities don't care until you do.
If you want to be on the safe side it's worth investigating further of course, but I believe that's how most small companies deal with it in practice.
Hi Marcel and welcome to WIP!
Taxes are a complicated matter you want to get right. They also vary per jurisdiction so I definitely recommend finding a good accountant in the country your business is based. If you have an accountant yet, I recommend asking other entrepreneurs in your local community with ideally a similar type of business as you are running or plan to run.
Just to give you some pointers though, yes you're right that as a EU-based company doing business with with consumers around the world you'll 1) need to know which country they are from, and 2) charge them the appropriate tax rate for that specific country. For example I think for German customers you need to charge 19% tax, while customers from the Netherlands will need to pay 21%.
I believe for each customer you'll need two pieces of "evidence" about where they are from. Don't quote me, but I think you can save the location of the IP address, the address they entered, and the country of their credit card. If two of those are the same country, you can assume that's the country of origin and you should base the tax rate on that.
The VATMOSS is rather complicated to explain, but yes that's basically one system where you enter all the taxes you charged for different countries, and then wire the total amount to your local tax authority. They will take care of the rest.
For B2B the story is a bit different, because you don't need to charge tax to registered businesses. Provided they are not from your country of origin (e.g. if you're based in France, then you still need to charge French companies tax too), and you need their VAT ID. You should also verify this is a valid number through one of the available APIs. If everything checks out you don't need to charge them VAT, but apply the "reverse charge" rule which means they need to take care of things on their side.
If this all sounds too complicated, you could also look into a service like Paddle or Gumroad who will do much of the heavy lifting for you. In a nutshell your customers become their customers, and they take care of all the taxes. Paddle or Gumroad then becomes your one customer so you only have one thing to deal with.
The price you pay is their fees, plus the limitations and risks that come with using a third party service like that. You'd be limited to whatever accounting and payment services they provide. Everything has to go through them. There's also some risk in that they could choose to no longer serve you, if they don't agree with the product/service you're selling. I think they can be a bit picky, because they are taking on some risks with their model.
But my main take away here is to talk to a professional. Getting information from random people on the internet is a good first step to get a general sense of what to be aware of and which questions to ask. But ultimately you don't want to risk doing this type of thing the wrong way.
Best of luck!
P.S.
My business used to be based in the EU too. It was a real pain. I never found an accountant I was 100% happy with. Ultimately I personally moved out of the EU and so did my business. If that's an option for you, that's worth considering too. But it's only applicable if you're no longer a resident of your own country.
Hey,
all this is now (as of January 2019) way easier if your EU sales are below €10,000 a year. In that case, you don't have to deal with VAT MOSS and you can simply charge your home country's VAT rate to all EU customers and declare it in your country. Also, you only need one piece of evidence. For more info see quaderno.io/blog/2019-vat-thr….
Moreover, Stripe Checkout can now handle it easily for you with dynamic tax ranges (stripe.com/docs/billing/subsc…). They will figure out where the customer is from and include the VAT in the invoice appropriately.
@yespizza I am planning to write an article showing how to become EU VAT compliant with Stripe Checkout so let me know if you are interested.
I recommend to read this guide to get a nice overview on the topic: www.chargebee.com/resources/g…
If you are below the threshold all this should be way easier, but as Marc says, it's always better to talk to a professional.
One more note: be sure to always show prices with VAT included.
Hope this helps!
(I am not a tax expert so please double check it.)
Jakub
Noted!
I've gotten this request a few times, but have been hesitant implementing it because it complicates the codebase a lot. And if I'm going to promise privacy, I better be damn sure it works really well.
But knowing at least 4 people want it is good to know. Please forward anyone else you think might want this here, to have them add their vote.
Also, please let me know how you'd like this to work. Are you okay with sharing your todos with all signed in members (easier to implement, but less private), or do you want to approve individual people to see your activity? (harder to implement, but more private).
Hey Paul, I already shared some feedback with you before so I won't repeat that here.
The two main "issues" I see with the website are 1) that the interface is still quite complex, and 2) the map feels a bit rigid.
Right now you've got a form on the left to represent adding a new forest, a list on the right to highlight the biggest forests, and then a map in the middle to show all the forests. Ideally this would all be part of one virtual environment. Almost like a Zelda game.
For example instead of showing a separate leaderboard you could show gold, silver, and bronze trophies in the 3 largest forests. Or maybe there's a celebration happening there with some animals. Something visually appealing.
For adding a new forest it would be nice if I could pick my own spot on the map directly. So I could collaborate with friends to build our forests together. Even better if I can pick my own tree types and the exact spot to place them. So I can get creative and spell out my name, etc.
I know some of those ideas are out there, but I guess my overall suggestion is to make it more of one virtual environment rather than a regular web app with a map in it.
I also realize that's A LOT of work, so for now I'd just go with what you already have. It's already quite interesting. So the above is perhaps something you could try for a future version.
Some more actionable feedback/typos/etc:
- Top of the page should probably be "it will be planted in real life."
- "Name or Company Name", I would just say "Name" people are smart enough to figure it out
- "Congratulation!" --> "Congratulations!"
- "Share your forest with the world"
đź’Ş Sounds like great progress!