[davb]

How does it handle VAT MOSS on digital goods in the EU?

The new rules state that sellers must charge VAT at the rate of the buyer's country and must record evidence of the buyer's location. Even businesses under the VAT threshold must register for VAT just to comply, unless you're selling through a third party who handles it for you - like Google Play.

[BrentOzar]

> How does it handle VAT MOSS on digital goods in the EU?

They don't. See: https://filesprout.com/support/what-do-i-need.html

"If after talking with a professional you are responsible for paying sales tax for your items, you'll have to add this into your pricing manually."

[Coding_Cat]

Pretty sure that won't work. You need to add the VAT in the buyer's region, not the seller's. This is of course a nightmare to manage. See: http://euvataction.org/key-facts/#key_regulations

If that link is to be believed, you also need to submit your taxes on a quarterly basis, not a yearly basis as filesprout mentions as well as keep track of and store your customers data for 10 years.

Also, on your link they say: >Do you take a % of my sales? No way jose :) That's your money.

Whereas the main page says: >No contracts or monthly fees, leave at anytime. We take 5% you keep 95%. Fair enough?

Which too me qualifies as taking a % of sales, 5 to be precise.

And my final complaint: grey text on a white background...

[dave_sullivan]

Yeah, actually, if you're going to be a third party selling user generated content directly (and paying those users) over the internet, what are your responsibilities as the distributor? Can you really just say "Ask your accountant, not our problem..."? Seems like that's the best one can do as a startup though. Incorporate elsewhere?

[Coding_Cat]

> Incorporate elsewhere?

Doesn't matter, to a degree, the rules apply to anyone selling to Europeans regardless of where they are based. How and if non-compliance will be prosecuted is a more complicated matter.

[dave_sullivan]

>> How and if non-compliance will be prosecuted is a more complicated matter.

Indeed. As far as I can tell, it's only been tested in a limited sense when there are relatively clear violations, such as drug markets, blatant piracy, or gambling. But extend that a bit further, and you get into the sort of murky territory where you're forced to blacklist entire countries because they have crazy people running them.

[calgoo]

IF someone provides the service with the VAT support i think it could actually work quite well for a lot of small vendors.

[bizifyme]

We also provide the service to help you with the EU VAT (and Norwegian VAT) and we also provides payment by SMS (mobile phone) for a lot of countries and a lot more.

https://www.bizify.me

[lukeholder]

Gumroad is: http://blog.gumroad.com/post/110080508463/vat

[adzicg]

leanpub does it for books

[bestan]

I'm assuming that filesprout doesn't do anything about EU VAT because I couldn't find any information on their site.

What does it actually mean then? They're likely to be responsible for EU VAT anyway. Do they provide me with EU VAT invoice that states supplier's VAT number? If not, then it can't act as an intermediary, and that makes them responsible for EU VAT, even if they're based in the US.

Can I comply with EU VAT myself selling through it? Very unlikely. For each B2C transaction EU requires me to have 2 pieces of non-contradictory evidence of customer's location. I will likely need buyer's IP, billing address, card country and in some cases even additional verification if all other pieces evidence contradict (actually happened to me when I was travelling). It doesn't seem that filesprout handles all of that and can provide me with that information.