"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?
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.
Lol, "simpler and fairer world"? I want some of what these people are smoking.
I'm a VAT payer and it's at minimum 15-20 incredibly complicated accounting forms per year, with harsh penalties for mistakes and missed deadlines. I would never be able to start doing business if I had to do this at the beginning, and I'm in the most lucrative market today - and I would never risk it too, the fines are damn huge.
Doing the forms costs me thousands of euro yearly even though my accounting is totally simple, I have just few invoices per month with just few line items.
As I said, this is why this place is failing business-wise.
I'm in Denmark, which I would not have expected to be the simplest place for taxes, but evidently it must be because I don't have any of these problems you do with VAT, although I only invoice one time per month it's true so maybe that is the difference.