I am in the process of turning a side project into something more serious. Being based in Germany means my company will be subject to the quite insane European VAT regulations. How do you deal with this in a SaaS business? Especially at the beginning.
After speaking to tax accountants and the finance office we decided to go for a reseller. The reseller does the invoicing for you. You just need to do the bookkeeping of the money you get from the reseller. We are using FastSpring. They do monthly subscriptions as well.
That said there is no straightforward, easy way to deal with this. The whole process is an insane mess. You can do everything correctly and still have problems with your local tax authorities afterwards (partly because they don't really know how to deal with these regulations themselves).
You deal with them by using the tax rules that are set out, and buy getting an accountant to make sure you are adhering to them.
Any issues that arise about revenue if you have to start charging vat are due to your pricing, not the Vat rules.
If you do business within EU with other countries you have to register for VAT and charge it. Then you have to get customer info and charge what his country charges....it's a mess.
You're correct though, I misunderstood your question, it seems you're not even at that stage yet. You should really talk to an accountant, not HN. They will tell you exactly what you need to be doing.
Doing Vattable business with other EU countries is a pain. You will need whether each customer is vat registered in their particular country and either charge Vat or not based upon that.
Are you doing business to business sales, or business to customer?