question: tax collection handling

[ndrean]

Enlightening, love this! Thks for putting this.

I recently bought stuff in a shop localised in the UK. I paid the stuff - duty-free - via Paypal. Then I got a notification from Fedex asking me to pay for the taxes, 20%. Once I paid, I received the goods.

Is this tax collection mechanism easy to set up with Stripe or Paddle?

[nelsonic]

@ndrean Good question. You're describing a purchase for physical goods that were shipped via FedEx. The tax collection tends to be handled by the international courier. FedEx has tax-embargoed packages for us so many times it's such a time-suck. ⏳

But to your question: the payment processor is not responsible for tax calculation/collection on goods sold. both Stripe and Paddle have tax calculation/collection tools, e.g: https://stripe.com/en-pt/tax

[ndrean]

It may seem like 2 unrelated operations, but since FedEx is the tax collector in this case, he needs to calculate it. So whether the seller tells Fedex the tax amount or FedEx calculates this based on the price/destination given by the seller. I wasn't sure if a seller could sell something tax-free and let the shipping company be in charge of the tax collection. The tax should be paid in the country of the buyer, France for me. I was also concerned by the limitation of Stripe in case the seller needs to give the figure to the shipping company:

Stripe Tax is available for sales in Australia, Canada, the EU-27, Hong Kong, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Nevertheless, I had an inquiry, that's why I was curious about this, but I understand it is more a kind of legal business problem than an IT thing. It was just in case you already encountered this "problem"!