Compliance is all we hear. With good reason.
But selling globally, outside of your home market, is increasing in complexity, compliance and overall risk for just about everyone. And for the small to medium size business its practically impossible. You need to think about sanctions, VAT, Tax, Import and Export duty, manage the paperwork, potentially register for VAT and Tax in numerous countries, under regimes that are regularly evolving, which increases legal and compliance costs.
The solution has traditionally been simply sell on a platform – think Etsy, Amazon, TikTok Shop – and the list goes on.
Sure you can approach the risk this way, assuming you typically have 9% to 25% (sometime more) to waste on the platform fees for the privilege.
What do you get for that? You rarely get much benefit these days by way of advertising and new clients, with most platforms expecting you to contribute to their advertising costs, and when you generate your own leads you still pay!
But what else can you do? You could appoint a Merchant-of-Record (MOR). But they typically refuse all sellers other than the very select few – due principally, and understandably, to the fact that they hold the baby when you go out of business, fail to perform (give a refund, or send faulty goods) and a plethora of other risks. And if you do get a MOR, you will pay for the privilege, so more or less back to square one.
You could go DIY. But that adds even more complexity, often beyond the reach of even the most seasoned eCommerce business. You’ll have to deal with appointing a VAT intermediary in the EU to start – and as they typically become jointly liable for your unpaid VAT they will also only deal with established businesses, or require substantial guarantees often cash-backed and charge significant sums for the mandatory (legal) requirement in the EU. That’s before you look at all the other countries!
N7 from VATAXIA is a fresh and inclusive approach that is open to the very smallest (and newest) eCommerce business – all the way through to the very largest.
You consume N7 by creating an account on our platform.
This builds you a website, blog and shopping cart with drag and drop customisation.
The N7 shopping cart is pre-configured with global tax codes, and it automatically detects the geo-location of your shoppers, applies the right taxes and then charges them. In parallel it applies the correct merchant account charging (debiting your customer) and accounting for the VAT and Tax as appropriate.
The N7 backend contains everything you would expect to see on an advances website, blog, SEO and eCommerce hosting website – including one off and recurring subscriptions for physical, digital and services.
N7 manages your orders, ledger, VAT, Tax, duties, refunds and your manage your fulfillment – as well as shipping. You can also activate the N7 fulfillment service.
N7 costs a fraction of all of the alternate options. Provided you use our Merchant Account providers and shippers – which is necessary as they are tied into our compliance offering – you’ll pay £15 per month flat fee and an additional 1.5% of your sales – but only for sales you make outside of your home market (where our compliant VAT and Tax service kicks in).
That’s no set up fees, no minimum term – cancel whenever you like (at the end of the then current month) and sell in most major currencies anywhere in the world (subject of course to sanctions and exchange controls).