Hacker News Reader

Comment by _ph_ | Hacker News Reader

Many benefits for sure, especially if you live in one of the richer countries. But what the EU gives you are certain rights, which are guaranteed to any EU citizen. Movement is no longer governed by treaties, but a right. As a business, you have the right to sell across Europe, without local regulations being able to ban you unilaterally.

View on HN

Good luck selling software across the EU if you live there. Check out the new VAT rules the EU imposed. It's less paperwork to sell to everywhere but the EU, which is madness.

That's a different thing, you sure have the right to sell your software. Unification of VAT policies would be a hard sell for the member countries.

How is this different from having to account for different state and local taxes when selling software inside the US?

Your payment processor tacks on sales tax. Just list where you have nexus. You get a number at the end of the quarter that you pay when you file taxes.

With VAT, you have to keep careful track of input VAT and sometimes later claim repayment from various governments.

There is a lot of obligatory registration and document submission.

The velocity of legislative change is high, especially when summed across member states.

Small entities have an incentive to underreport. Thus, a lot of enforcement activity is targeted at small entities.

I think a lot of EU members would rather take the Swiss[1] deal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_U...

Instead, you get European regulations that ban you locally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com