Ask HN: UK Startups and VATMOSS | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: UK Startups and VATMOSS

3 pointsgraystevens9 comments

I'm working on a startup that will be a SaaS and I'm hoping to incorporate it here in the UK. However, the billing side of things is something I have been heavily debating in my head the last few days, so I figured I'd ask how some others have gone about it.

My SaaS will be B2B, and so far I figure I have a number of options: Write it all myself with Stripe or similar as a backend, or alternatively I use some external services which have popped up specifically to deal with EU VAT/tax with regards to invoicing. There is also scope to just outsource it all and go with Chargebee or similar.

How are other UK based B2B startups dealing with this?

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[random advice from the internet]

I'm going to parrot my interpretation of patio11's [1] advice since I don't have direct experience: Pay for the service and focus on building a product people will pay for. That's what those services that handle VAT did and why you are considering using them.

What Patio11 doesn't say is if you build it, you have to maintain it and maintaining it means keeping up with changes to tax law and tax forms and tax policy. Odds are you're not a tax expert (if you were, you'd probably be standing up a tax calculation service like the one's you've found).

http://www.kalzumeus.com/archive/

[1]: AKA Patrick Mackenzie. My understanding is that he often chats with people who contact him.

Sage advice, and when combined with the reply below from jakobegger, it makes sense to outsource this, as it won't be strictly B2B.

Think that answers that!

You don't need to worry about it if you're B2B. Also you only need to registered for VAT once you hit 85k in revenue, so it might be worth considering if it'd be worth you delaying until that point.

It can be advantageous to register before then if you pay expenses with VAT added.

I built Quaderno (https://quaderno.io) to deal with the VATMOSS nightmare. Let me know if you have any questions. Happy to help.

I use Avangate who handle tax issues for me, they do cost a little more than Stripe but it makes life a lot easier only having to bill one client each month.

> My SaaS will be B2B

VAT MOSS only applies to B2C sales.

Theoretically yes, but in practice many "business" customers don't have a VAT-ID (eg. businesses with less than 20000€ revenue, universities, non-profits). If you want to sell to them, you need to charge VAT.

Thank you jakobegger, very good point, as I'm likely to be interacting with these smaller startups earlier on in my launch.

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