Roadmap

Reverse Charge for B2B, Without the Headache

Sam Bakker · Founder, GoCushy · July 25, 2026

Update · 8 August 2026B2B reverse charge shipped. This post was accurate on 25 July 2026, when the per-region tax posture was still on a branch. It went to production on 28 July and is live now: three modes, set once in your business settings and enforced on the server at every payment path — one-time card, Airwallex, subscription and PayPal. It needs the Worldwide Tax & Affiliates Pack, and every region stays on “charge all” until you switch one over. The rest of the post — the problem, and how the setting works — still stands.

TL;DR

When you sell to a VAT- or GST-registered business across a border, you usually shouldn't charge tax at all — the buyer accounts for it under reverse charge. Doing that safely means validating the buyer's tax number and getting the invoice wording exactly right. GoCushy is building this as a per-region setting inside the Worldwide Tax & Affiliates Pack. To be clear: it is coming, not shipped. This post explains the problem and the solution we're building toward.

Reverse charge is one of those tax rules that sounds obscure until it costs you. Here's the short version: if you're a non-resident seller and your buyer is a registered business in the EU, UK, New Zealand or Australia, the tax on that sale is generally the buyer's responsibility, not yours. You invoice with zero VAT or GST, note that reverse charge applies, and the buyer self-accounts for it in their own return.

Get it right and you often don't need to register or remit in that region at all. Get it wrong and the exposure runs both ways — overcharge a business customer and you've created a refund and a bad look; undercharge a consumer you thought was a business and you can owe backdated tax plus a registration you never wanted.

Why this is genuinely hard

The reason no small tool does this cleanly is that "just don't charge tax to businesses" hides a stack of sharp edges:

You have to prove the buyer really is a registered business. That means validating an EU VAT number against VIES, a UK VRN against HMRC, an Australian ABN against the ABR — each a different API with its own quirks and downtime.
New Zealand has no lookup at all. There's no official API to verify an NZ GST number, so the evidence has to come from a checksum plus a business-use declaration — genuinely weaker than the others, and worth being honest about.
The invoice wording is mandatory and region-specific. The EU requires the literal words "Reverse charge." The UK, NZ and AU each want their own legend and the buyer's tax number on the document.
One slipped-through consumer sale breaks the whole exemption. If a single B2C buyer sneaks past as a business, the shelter can collapse for the region. So the block has to fail closed, not open.
Residency changes the answer. The exemption only helps a seller who is non-resident to that region. A New Zealand company selling to NZ businesses still charges 15%. The setting can't pretend otherwise.

That last point is why this can't be a single global "B2B only" switch. It has to be per-region, and it has to default to charging everyone — which is exactly today's behaviour.

The solution we're building

The design is a per-region tax posture with three modes, set once and enforced on the server for every payment path — card, subscription, and PayPal alike, so there's no side door a buyer can slip through.

Charge all (the default): consumers pay their local rate; genuine cross-border businesses get reverse charge automatically. Nothing changes from how tax works today.
Business only: for a region where you're non-resident and want to stay unregistered — a validated business number is required, reverse charge applies, and consumer sales are blocked at checkout with a clear message.
Off: no tax logic for that region at all.

Under the hood it validates the buyer's number against the right registry, refuses to accept a format-plausible-but-fake ID, records the validation proof against the order, and prints the correct reverse-charge legend on the invoice for that jurisdiction. When a lookup service is down, it holds the sale rather than waving it through — because failing open is what quietly destroys the exemption.

Where it fits — and the honest status

This is the heart of the optional Worldwide Tax & Affiliates Pack, the +$95 add-on to founding membership. I want to be completely straight about timing: automatic reverse charge and per-region tax modes are not live today. What's live now is real tax at checkout on your own Stripe registrations and sequential compliant invoices — the groundwork this builds on, covered in Tax, Done Right on Your Own Account.

If you sell B2B across borders, this is being built for you, and founding members with the pack get it as it rolls out. You can see how tax sits alongside the rest of the selling machinery on the use cases page. None of this is tax advice — where you register, and whether business-only fits your residency, is a question for your accountant.

Founding member: fee-free for life.

$295 one-time locks in lifetime access and 0% GoCushy platform fees for life — you still pay only Stripe's standard rate. Reverse charge and per-region tax modes ship in the optional Worldwide Tax & Affiliates Pack, +$95.

See the founding offer

Open now — no seat cap and no published close date. One payment, not a subscription, with a 30-day refund.

Reverse charge is coming, built carefully, for the sellers who actually need it. Founding membership is open on the founding offer.

Sam Bakker is the founder of GoCushy. He has a long track record building launch and funnel software for creators, and builds from New Zealand.