I don't use Stripe Tax, but when I was incorporated in the Netherlands I would just charge everyone the same amount (e.g. $100), and then retroactively decide what percentage was VAT.

So if the customer was in the Netherlands (e.g. based on their credit card country + IP address), I would do $100 / 1.21 = $82.64 as base price, and the remainder as VAT.

I did use Stripe Tax and invoicing.

Note that Stripe also allows configuring whether VAT is included in the price or not. In my case, I prefer to exclude it from the price.

This works nicely, but depending on your accountant, he will or you will struggle when reporting numbers since Stripe reports almost never directly include all the data that your accountant wants or needs.

On my side, I had to write a script to extract and classify data based on my accountant's needs. For instance, I have to know my revenue per country for customers with no VAT numbers (individuals) and the amount of VAT collected.

In the case of customers with a VAT number (companies), reverse charge applies, except for companies legally based in the same country as me (I am based in France). I need to know the total revenue for companies in the European Union, the total revenue for companies outside the European Union, and the total revenue for companies exempted from VAT by an express provision of the law. This last case happened to me only once when making a Stripe invoice to the OECD organization.

Then, things become a bit more complex when Stripe informs you that you need to register in some other countries, that you register and need to collect taxes for other countries. I guess your accountant will be happy to help.

Another issue for me was dealing with multiple currencies and conversions. Stripe takes a fee for the conversion but does not put it in the fee column in its reports. The Stripe fee for currency conversion is "transparently" included in the conversion rate, which does not match the market rate. More subtly, some reports use the conversion rate with the fee deducted while others use the conversion rate with the fee included! It took me a long time to understand why the numbers were not matching after some computations due to this.

Regarding whether to charge 21% when Stripe shows 0%, we most probably don't have enough context to really help, and, as suggested by others, the best is to consult with your accountant. However, Stripe Tax seems to work quite well and is used for millions of transactions, so I would first trust Stripe over your accountant without a very clear explanation.

@EddyVinck A very similar question was recently posted on Reddit and I am going to copy/paste my comment below. But please feel free to ask any questions. I am a CFO for an IT company and I worked with Stripe.

My comment:

Stripe can not handle tax. Stripe can barely compute tax. From their website:

Stripe Tax lets you calculate, collect, and report tax on global payments with a single integration. Know where to register, automatically collect the right amount of tax, and access the reports you need to file returns.

Believe me, I have been working as a CFO for several companies and a system that tells you where to register and give you the raw data to file YOURSELF your reports, is not what I call a system that handles my taxes!

If you want to seriously work globally, go with a MoR and forget about Stripe. Now Lemon Squeezy or Paddle, that's the big question. It seems that Lemon Squeezy is way more expensive for companies outside the US and working globally.

Got a response from my accountant

For legal reasons etc I’ll say this is not financial advice and you should talk to a professional yourself

my accountant recommends charging 21% Dutch tax to only consumers from the EU until I hit 10k per year in revenue and pay my taxes in The Netherlands for those consumer customers. Once I hit 10k ARR then I’ll have to start paying tax in other EU countries themselves.

Just need to figure out how to charge a flat 21% to those EU consumer customers only.