Yo Substack, any chance you’ll start taking care of EU VAT any time soon?

It’s a MAJOR piece of red tape for anyone in Europe (and technically Americans too)—to the point where it prevents people from turning on paid to begin with.

Right now, if I turned on paid, I’d have to…

• Figure out which country each paid subscriber is from, and charge them based on that country’s VAT rate (I hear Stripe Tax solves this, but it’s only ~30% of the problem)

• Remit that money to those EU countries via my tax authority and deal with all the red tape that follows

• Write custom invoices for EVERY subscriber for EVERY monthly charge in order to deal with my own tax here in Germany

That last part alone adds so much administrative overhead, I wouldn’t turn on paid unless I could expect to make at least thousands of $ each year.

Platforms like Gumroad handle all this stuff. I get one payout each month from one US company and write one invoice. That’s easy. No VAT, nothing.

That’s why I’m happy to pay their fees.

Substack, too, could handle this. But will it? Hope dies last! ✌🏻