Yeah, if only it was as simple as that...
Our customer base isn't entirely VAT-registered businesses, and even if it was, it is now impossible to sell to the EU without being VAT and VAT MOSS registered and filing quarterly VAT MOSS returns, even if the VAT return for my home country is blank. Fuck that noise, life is way too fucking short to quadruple our record keeping and verification workload because Google and Amazon are bastards and the EU are idiots.
I already spent way more time dealing with administrative bullshit than I do writing code these days.
The potential solution is to use a 3rd party to handle sales, which we may well do once we can verify that it won't shift revenue location and force us to be VAT registered.
It's not too bad for us, we can just drop 30% of revenue and it just means Tom's kid doesn't get new shoes this year. It's really bad for people who sell £2.50 knitting patterns on etsy and are being forced to register for VAT, hire a VAT accountant, file VAT and VAT MOSS returns 4 times a year and deal with all of the record keeping, verification and VAT calculation bullshit for a few grand a year. (hint: they're not, they're closing shop instead...)
adam.
------ Original Message ------
Sent: 12/29/2014 11:26:25 AM
Subject: Re: [Observium] Subscriptions in the EU