[mstolpm]

Congrats on your launch! But honestly, your site gives me some huge red flags regarding your service:

You don't have a legally valid "Impressum" on fruits.de: It points to fanbase.com and that one isn't even mentioning fruits.de. So, as a German startup, it seems you're at least bending German and EU law by not providing the information necessary for proving services on the domain fruits.de. And as a result, as a potential user, I can't trust you with my business.

Moreover, I couldn't find information about your "sales tax" claim. You know better than me that selling digital products in the EU and across borders can be kind of tricky, depending on what you are selling (e.g. ebook vs software), if you're selling B2B or B2C, and depending on the origin of your customer. As a user, I'd need much more information about how you handle this and the bookkeeping you mentioned, but it somehow looks like you're relying on PayPal as the payment gateway and are not handling sales tax / USt by yourself?

And no: As someone looking for a simple solution to sell my digital products, I don't want do book a consultation for answers to the questions above.

[donjoe]

Hi, dev here, thanks for the input!

Fruits is a pivot for fanbase.com which sadly didn't make it. Within a few days, we managed to build fruits and launched it as the quickest MVP we could come up with. That's what you're seeing today. The imprint still points towards the current legal entity (fanbase GmbH). A new legal entity is currently under registration by the founders. Once the paperwork is done, the founders will move all assets to the new company and align the imprint accordingly.

Concerning taxation: this seems to be a clear improvement we need to work on communicating. Taxation is hard and we tried to break it down in a pricing calculator (which does not yet seem to do all that good of a job, point taken).

Disclaimer - as mentioned below/above in some of the comments: not the tax attorney ;-)

We are working with a tax office that helped us figuring out international taxation and will be able to answer all legal taxation questions in detail for each single country we're in business with.

Taxation for fruits essentially means:

- fruits charges the buyer and applies tax applicable for fruits (company in Germany) and the buyer in country XYZ

- each buyer will receive an invoice (issued by fruits)

- the seller will receive a single credit note for all sales performed within a month targeting a German company (fruits)

[Buyer] <<- Invoice (Tax) --- [fruits] <<- Credit note ->> [Seller]

[timvdalen]

As someone who builds multiple products in this space, make sure you check if a credit note is valid for your purpose. It's not in NL, and it would get you in trouble with the tax authority. The proper solution is a self-billed invoice (though perhaps you're using that and just calling it a credit note!)

[jacquesm]

> Once the paperwork is done, the founders will move all assets to the new company and align the imprint accordingly.

Make sure that you deal with IP rights very carefully in that situation.

Also, the GP is right, you do need that impressum page.

[social_quotient]

I’ve used this before with good success on a few projects

https://www.taxjar.com/product/api

[adaml_623]

After a quick browse of the Tax Jar website I got the solid impression that they were US only. I saw mention of 'sales tax' but nothing about VAT, GST, HST, etc. No mention of international or shipping. And their pricing page which I normally find to be useful for this type of thing was actually totally confusing to me.

The one thing on the pricing page that jumped out at me was, "AI-driven product taxability recommendations"

AI recommendations and dealing with the tax authorities doesn't really seem like a sound choice.

[pchangr]

This kind of bureaucracy is why our business is registered out of Germany, haha.

Edit: I’m not vouching for anyone not following the law. But I do think the rules are much easier to understand and follow in other EU countries.

[101008]

I am working on a SaaS product with a friend that will be mostly a B2B (although it can work as B2C too) and besides all the tech, what I am afraid mostly is all the tax/money/stuff.

I am not from Europe neither USA - I'd like only to get paid monthly for the service I provide. Is it difficult? If anyone can give some advice I'd be grateful.

[helen_fruits]

> what I am afraid mostly is all the tax/money/stuff.'

At fruits, we are automatically handling all the taxes & invoicing for you - internationally & correctly, so you don't have to be afraid of making illegal billing mistakes. It's all handled for you, you and your customers automatically receive an automated invoice / billing overview. :-)

[pchangr]

It really boils down to the country.IMHO, German tax system is madly complicated but Estonian is super simple, for example.

[bityard]

> what I am afraid mostly is all the tax/money/stuff

You shouldn't be afraid, you should pay a professional CPA and/or tax accountant to take care of all of that stuff for you.

You wouldn't draft your own legal documents (I hope), correct? It's no different on the money side of things.

[ricardobayes]

At that point it almost doesn't matter if they draft them themselves as they won't have the energy/money to chase some vendor/partner etc legally as a day 0 startup.

[101008]

I pay my taxes locally. The issue is what happens for the other companies in other countries, do they need something special?

[Dand313]

take a look at getrevin.com - basically an MoR (taxes,filing etc) but you can use Stripe - and they can serve you in countries that Stripe can't.

[thelittleone]

You could look into a UAE freezone.

[schnebbau]

You sound like a user that expects the world for your $20/month business. These red flags could be corrected in a day.

[bryanrasmussen]

I think they sound like a user who expects the service to follow German and EU rules and regulations when on a German domain, which sounds not like the world but common sense.

Also "for your $20 month business"? I mean I guess he expects it for everyone's $20 month business.

[emteycz]

This thread (and it being upvoted to the top) is a prime example of why there isn't any Big Tech in EU - because we slam down even fun little startups with this legalese bullshit as soon as they appear.

[brtkdotse]

"legalese bullshit" - you sell a product, you need to handle VAT. Every single business in the EU abides by this, why should a business be exempt just because they're on the internet?

[ricardobayes]

US businesses - afaik - are not required to collect sales tax out of state below a threshold of 100k per year per state. So yeah, the parent comment is valid. A bit of pro-new-business flexibility wouldn't hurt in Europe.

[emteycz]

That's not true, there's a rather large minimum until you need to think about VAT. 100k EUR/year where I live.

[brtkdotse]

Not since last year

https://vat-one-stop-shop.ec.europa.eu/index_en

[pchangr]

Can you tell me about other countries requiring an impressum? .. I think Switzerland..?

[bryanrasmussen]

The 24 Unicorns in Germany https://www.failory.com/startups/germany-unicorns

[pchangr]

The 20 in 8 times smaller Israel:

https://www.failory.com/startups/israel-unicorns

[emteycz]

Yeah lol, 24? With the size of German economy it should be 240 or 2400, definitely not 24. (if it was irony then I'm sorry I didn't recognize it)

[bryanrasmussen]

you're correct 240 if you say well the American economy is 10 times the size of the German (it's a little over 12 I think) but I wonder if we might see that the rate of German unicorns is growing at about the level it should be in recent years, that is to say the disparity in number of Unicorns is more Germany starting late than anything else.

Aside from that of course the EU has made it relatively clear it does not really want unicorns like Twitter or Facebook. So I mean if you take away PII violating companies from the mix then things might look more equal also - but perhaps that is more of that pesky legalese bullshit you seem to find onerous.

[mlatu]

all i can hear is "if only the whole world was as unregulated as the US"-mimimi

[rchaud]

The US is plenty regulated. It's why VCs have to spend absurd sums on lawyers for Uber and Airbnb. Sidestepping laws and regulations isn't cheap.

[ricardobayes]

EU is so backwards with bureaucracy it is actually easier to set up a US entity for a new startup and hire EU devs in it than set up in an EU country and navigate the tax laws of 28 countries.

[GlacierFox]

He sounds like someone who knows what they're looking for and is diligently inspecting the service before spending money on it. It doesn't matter how insignificant the amount of money is, it's important to be clear on what you are actually buying and if it's actually legit.