Stripe Billing

Based on a number of lawyers (we've gone deep on this over the past several years), I'm confident this is resolved through the combination of our terms and privacy policy - the EU/Swiss privacy shield stipulations, which drove the privacy policy encompasses the specific data there that's shared (check out the section entitled "Collection", which is then what's referenced in the shared section). These are common information to engage in internet commerce like email, billing info, etc. This is actually specifically why we had language in our Terms to encompass the actual financial data. The ironic part of all this is we repeatedly told our legal folks we needed to simplify, simplify, simplify.

All that being said - you clearly came to the page and thought the worst based on the language, so I guess it doesn't really matter if we're legally doing the right thing, we need to make sure you (and other folks who reach us) are interpreting and seeing what we're doing as intended.

Give me/us a little bit of time to figure out how to make this instantly obvious. As I mentioned, we're in the midst of clearing up our house based on GDPR requirements, so it's a good time to revisit. Really appreciate the feedback - only way we get better. :)

There are two big differences.

Let's say I'm selling some digital good online. Consider three purchasers, one in the US in the state of Washington, one in Germany, and one in France.

First, how much tax do I have to collect from each?

For the German customer, that is easy. It is 19% VAT. I don't have to care where in Germany they live.

For the French customer, that is easy. It is 20$ VAT. I don't have to care where in France they live.

For the US customer in Washington...it is not easy. There is a state wide 6.5% sales tax, but there are also county, city, and other sales taxes that I have to collect. For example, if the customer is in the city of Seattle, I'm supposed to collect the 6.5% state tax, plus a 2.7% city tax, plus a 0.4% for something called the "Regional Transit Authority"...that's 9.6%. If that person is over in Bellevue instead of in Seattle, it would have been 10% (6.5% state, 3.5% Bellevue).

For the US customer, I have to care where in their state they live. Also, tax boundaries are not guaranteed to line up with postal code boundaries, so to do that tax accurately I really would need to collect their full postal address (which since I'm selling a digital good I have no use for except for calculating taxes).

Second, what do I do with the tax I collect?

For the EU, I sign up for the VAT MOSS system in a single EU country. Then each quarter I have to file a simple form with the tax authorities in that single EU country that simply lists each EU country, what my total taxable sales were in that country, the VAT rate I used, and the amount of VAT collected. I turn the collected VAT over to that single country's tax authorities. Then they deal with distributing it to all the other countries.

For the US...I have to deal with each state I collect tax for separately. Each has its own forms. Each has its own place to file them. Each has its own place to pay.

If you have to deal with more than just your own state and maybe a handful of others in the US, you pretty much have to use a third party service that specialized in handling all of this. For companies in lines of business that are only barely profitable, this could be prohibitively expensive.

If Congress ever decides to require online companies to collect tax for all states, instead of just those that they have a presence in, and they do not require that the states use something like the VAT MOSS system, and they do not require that each state has a single rate for out-of-state non-present sellers, it's going to be nightmare for small companies, and possibly drive many out of business.

1. I have experience acquiring data for the financial industry, and your privacy policy looks like the kind used to discreetly allow data brokering for free apps that have a lot of user data, and

2. I’ve seen executives who do sell data deny that they sell data by being overly literal and obtuse about what users mean when they ask if their data is sold. When users ask if their data is sold they’re usually including “data sharing with affiliates”, even if they aren’t savvy enough to use that terminology. The concern there is that user data collected by third parties is allowed to be reshared by their affiliates and under opaque terms that do not preclude monetization.

Edit: See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16772655