> Brex is a financial technology company, not a bank. The Brex business account consists of Checking, a commercial checking account provided by Column N.A., Member FDIC, and Treasury and Vault, cash management services provided by Brex Treasury LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC.
Stripe has for years helped non-EU companies to do tax fraud in the EU, and in a just world their management would be charged.
Every time a customer in the EU pays with Stripe, they exactly know if they are a private customer or not and in which country that customer is located in. Stripe also knows who the counterparty is ("their merchant").
Yet Stripe systematically enabled their merchants to avoid paying appropriate VAT for sales to private customers in the EU. The merchants would send you a "receipt" and then go dark, no proper invoice provided and no appropriate VAT payments to the EU made.
Their merchants could write fantasy names on the invoices, Stripe would not check or correct anything. They simply ignored the whole Mini-One-Stop-Shop in terms of VAT.
That's the "benefit" of using Stripe, they had very happy merchants who didn't need to pay taxes when selling digital products to EU customers.
I had to light a very big fire under their ass for them to provide proper invoices. I have zero indication they systematically remediated the tax fraud situation and actually paid the EU the VAT that Stripe merchants owe if you'd look into Stripe's accounting.
Ignorance is bliss I guess? Unfortunately in civilized non-US countries we have a thing called accounting and if you spend money with the company credit card there is someone called "accountant" who wants to see the invoice.
And Stripe is OBLIGATED to tell me at least who is the damn COUNTERPARTY to my transaction. Company name, company registration number, company country of residence. Ideally with address. And - wow - now we have everything to actually legally follow up with the merchant to get a proper invoice from them.
But Stripe is actively obscuring this information, and making it hard for users to find out. Many of the Stripe merchants don't even have an imprint on their website.
You ask why they hide the information? Because otherwise it would be clear even to ignorant people like you that in fact a VAT needs to be paid on that transaction.
> Do you think stripe is correctly remitting US sales and county taxes?
You tell me. Would the same people who help evade tax payments in the EU really do the same in the US? That's unbelievable! /s
> The obligation has always been on the company making the sale not the processor.
That's incorrect. At minimum, the processor needs to tell me exactly who the money goes to, so I can reach out to them.
And that's a "legal reach out" kind of information including company name, company type, company registration number, and company country of incorporation.
Stripe makes it easy for merchants to obscure that information and is actively hiding it from the customers who paid the merchant.
Stripe never claimed to handle tax however. Merchants have to handle tax on their own. This is no different than accepting cash or using a card terminal in your shop. The payment processor does not handle your tax for you.
There is no credit card terminal in the whole EU which is not tied to a point-of-sale system, which only purpose is to create INVOICES. Somehow the Stripe team forgot that fact.
I find your critique not very sensible. Point-of-sale systems are not necessarily tied to the payment terminal just because they communicate to each other. If companies choose to use Stripe they do have to set up their own invoicing and tax handling. Your comment makes it sound like Stripe hides this fact and thus users end up not handling tax or invoices because they were mislead. But if you run any kind of businesses being on top of taxes is obviously paramount. I don’t quite get your gripe here.
Stripe has built-in features for merchants to create invoices and receipts.
Stripe does KYC for their merchants and exactly know that they are a company of certain type from the US.
Stripe facilitates a sale of digital goods between the US-based merchant and EU-based consumer. At this point the US-based merchant is obligated to pay the VAT and create an INVOICE.
Only Stripe knows from which EU country the customer comes from. The US-based merchant does not know which EU country the customer comes from.
Therefore Stripe is obligated to calculate the applicable VAT (based on country of customer) for the transaction and deduct it fromt he payment amount. STRIPE IS NOT DOING THIS.
And once payment is made Stripe does not enforce the merchant to provide an invoice, even though Stripe knows exactly it just facilitated a sale of digital goods between US-based company and EU-based customer. Stripe even enables the merchant to put fantasy information into the receipts and invoices, they don't have valid company name, addresses, or registration numbers.
Stripe also allows their merchants who just did a transaction to EU customer to only offer a "receipt", with no sign of an invoice. This "receipt" can contain a single website url, it can contain total fantasy name, it does not need to contain an address, or even a country of the Stripe merchant. It does not contain a company registration number or jurisdiction of the Stripe merchant. It does not contain company type or legal company name of the Stripe merchant. EVEN THOUGH STRIPE KNOWS ALL OF THIS BECAUSE THEY KYC THEIR MERCHANTS.
This is in total violation of any EU accounting rules which also applied to Ireland where the Stripe EU HQ is.
Luckily Stripe lawyers know exactly that they are systematically aiding and abetting tax fraud against the European Union and once you press the proper regulatory buttons they will cave, and after months of stonewalling suddenly their merchants are forced to provide their FULL COMPANY NAME AND COMPANY REGISTRATION NUMBER AND COUNTRY OF OPERATION, and actually state VAT in the invoice.
But their default mode of operation is "We are located in Ireland, EU law applies to us, we know EU customer buys digital goods from US merchant, we KYD'd the merchant but still we ignore that EU VAT applies to the transaction".
Any accountants and lawyers working for Stripe Ireland should be disbarred just on the fact they are associated with this systematic tax fraud.
There was no systematic remediation of the situation - even though Stripe knows about tax fraud by a merchant, they will only restate the invoices FOR THE SINGLE CUSTOMER THAT COMPLAINS ABOUT IT instead of forcing the merchant to properly create invoices for every single transaction with EU customers of that merchant.
Show me a tax agency in your country which allows you to get away with this. It is highly criminal, systematic behavior, clearly targeted against the European Union.
