[BlueTemplar]

But why is the VAT a showstopper ?

Because of extra complexity ? But the payment software itself can figure out the exact amounts. Which then can also be aggregated monthly/yearly.

Not to mention that plenty of jurisdictions only require that for businesses, while non-businesses don't have to report anything about their donations/sales unless they cross a yearly threshold.

[wtracy]

I can't find it now, but several years ago a dev posted his experiences here dealing with VAT when selling software across the EU.

He had to comply with a completely different set of tax laws for each EU member state that he received a purchase from. The cost he paid to his accountant to be able to be in compliance was like twice what he paid in actual taxes.

A big party of the problem is that many of the tax laws were so inconsistent and vaguely worded that every transaction had to be gone over manually.

[tzs]

That sounds like it was fairly long ago. With the introduction of the VAT MOSS (Mini One Stop Shop) system somewhere around 2015 it got a lot easier. VAT MOSS got replaced with something else a couple years ago, whose name I forget, but it largely works the same at least from the point of view of a non-EU company selling digital goods via the net into the EU.

The way VAT MOSS work is that instead of having to register for VAT collection in every EU country you sell in, and having to deal with reporting and remitting in every such country, you just have to register in one. You do all your reporting and remitting to just the tax authorities in that country.

You still have to collect the correct VAT on your sales into the other countries, but you report those sales to the country you are registered with and turn the money over to them. They deal with then reporting to and paying the other countries.

We're registered in Ireland. I wasn't involved in registering, but the person who handled it told me that it took something like 10 minutes on the web, with no need to interact with any humans. The quarterly reporting is, I'm told, a simple upload of a CSV file that contains a line for each EU country we had sales in listing the total amount of sales, the VAT rate, and the VAT collected.

[wtracy]

That sounds like wonderful news!