I use Shopify but I’m ready to switch to a different platform if they cover my Vat on an international level. The huge pain of international VAT tax on digital goods is a crazy burden for individual sellers without a tax team. We can’t possibly file taxes in every country or pay a third party thousands like corporations do. Luckily, a few platforms are starting to offer sellers the benefit of taking care of the international VAT and GST which is a huge game changer.
New Developments – Merchant of Record (MoR) Platforms
LEMON SQUEEZY 🤩
YES! Lemon Squeezy, among many others, have now created platforms and solutions for selling digital goods and cover all the tax responsibilty! Amazing. They will handle all tax collection, invoicing, legalities, and remittence. It’s a perfect solution for individual digital sellers. Now, for all of us old folk who are married to Shopify etc, integration does not seem to be there yet.
ETSY 🤩
Etsy now charges and remits all the VAT taxes on digital goods for their sellers. Here’s the Etsy VAT page about it and the huge list of countries they pay. This is amazing and it’s the future. I may just redirect certain countries to an Etsy store to be compliant. Etsy is really thinking about the individual sellers and they will be well positioned when laws demand that platforms do this. Etsy is not the dedicated store I need but congrats to them!
These are the countries they cover for the seller: Australia, Belarus, Canada, Chile, the EU, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, or the United Arab Emirates.
Teachable 😃
Teachable is pretty good, covering US sales tax and EU Vat. Not as many as Etsy but good enough for most people. I’ve love to see Canada, Australia, India, and the UK added to the list. Here’s their tax page.
PayHip 🧐
PayHip is one of the halfway-there platforms at least covering the EU Vat but falls short compared to the huge list of countries that Etsy is covering. Still, a step in the right direction. Here’s their tax page about their VAT coverage.
GUMROAD 🧐
Gumroad, like PayHip, covers the EU Vat. Here’s the Gumroad page about their VAT coverage.
SHOPIFY, SELZ, & BIGCOMMERCE 😡
I use Shopify (which is aweseme btw) but I haven’t heard a word from them about any plans to charge and remit VAT on behave of sellers. This is crazy, they are supposed to be the leading e-commerce platform but they are behind the game. I would even settle with a product redirect to Etsy for certain countries if it was built into the platform. But nothing. The minute another platform starts to do this a huge flock of digital sellers will switch platforms. I’ll be the first.