As a EU resident, I investigated this and eventually decided to go with Gumroad (also looked at Paddle and similar services).
Building my own tax system and keeping an eye on tax rates and rules across the globe would cost way too much time and draw my focus away from building an awesome product.
You could also look at an in-between solution like Quaderno they integrate with popular payment services and add tax to your invoice and give you the paperwork to send to various tax agencies.
I'm quite happy with Gumroad, it's not perfect (far from it), for example they don't do bank payment to NL at the moment (apparently they're working on it). My customers purchase through Gumroad and then register their purchase in my customer portal, that way they're my customers and no matter what Gumroad does I have their contact information.
Gumroad: Customer creates Gumroad account and pays to Gumroad via Gumroad payment flow. Gumroad adds tax and pays tax to tax agencies. Paddle takes cut (3% when on 10 dollar plan). Gumroad pays to you.
Paddle: You create a customer portal to manage payments. Customer pays to Paddle via Paddle payment flow. Paddle adds tax and pays tax to tax agencies. Paddle takes cut (I believe 5%). Paddle pays to you.
Quaderno: You create a customer portal and set up (for example) Stripe and everything you normally would. Customer pays through Stripe. Quaderno adds tax. Customer pays to you. You pay tax to tax agencies.
+1 for Quaderno, I used it for a few years and it did help simplify tax reports a bit. There's still a lot you have to do yourself though, but it's probably also the most flexible solution as you get to keep using Stripe.
As a EU resident, I investigated this and eventually decided to go with Gumroad (also looked at Paddle and similar services).
Building my own tax system and keeping an eye on tax rates and rules across the globe would cost way too much time and draw my focus away from building an awesome product.
You could also look at an in-between solution like Quaderno they integrate with popular payment services and add tax to your invoice and give you the paperwork to send to various tax agencies.
I'm quite happy with Gumroad, it's not perfect (far from it), for example they don't do bank payment to NL at the moment (apparently they're working on it). My customers purchase through Gumroad and then register their purchase in my customer portal, that way they're my customers and no matter what Gumroad does I have their contact information.
Gumroad: Customer creates Gumroad account and pays to Gumroad via Gumroad payment flow. Gumroad adds tax and pays tax to tax agencies. Paddle takes cut (3% when on 10 dollar plan). Gumroad pays to you.
Paddle: You create a customer portal to manage payments. Customer pays to Paddle via Paddle payment flow. Paddle adds tax and pays tax to tax agencies. Paddle takes cut (I believe 5%). Paddle pays to you.
Quaderno: You create a customer portal and set up (for example) Stripe and everything you normally would. Customer pays through Stripe. Quaderno adds tax. Customer pays to you. You pay tax to tax agencies.
+1 for Quaderno, I used it for a few years and it did help simplify tax reports a bit. There's still a lot you have to do yourself though, but it's probably also the most flexible solution as you get to keep using Stripe.