Selling stuff on the web is not that hard anymore. Services like Stripe or Paymill make it very easy to integrate credit card payments and even getting started with Paypal is only half-horrible. But the real pain in the ass is collecting VAT correctly — at least when you are a company located in Germany (and probably most other European countries) There are simply too many rules to be considered when you send a client an invoice. For a small business with a couple invoices per year it's not a big deal. You just ask your tax advisor for any invoice that is not 100% clear. But if you want to sell software worldwide for example you simply have to find someone who does the hard VAT work for you. I went for Fastspring to handle sales for me for Kirby just because they also handle VAT collection.
The solution would be an open-source collection of VAT rules that can be audited and cared for by a bigger community. Something in the line of a simple JSON file per country, which lists all the rules. Such a list would be the perfect starting point for any kind of software which you want to build on top of it and integrate proper invoicing and payments with. I'm not a tax advisor and I don't know which would be a proper format for something like this or if there's even something that already exists. I'm always happy for any hints I could share with the world: @bastianallgeier
This would be a nice base to build upon indeed. You'd probably have to be careful how to term this collection in order not to give official tax advise.