A few people were surprised at checkout. The plan said 9 euros on the site, and the checkout asked for 10.71. Nobody complained, but two people asked, and when two people ask I assume twenty more wondered and quietly closed the tab.
So the site now says it next to every price: excl. VAT. This is what that means, and why I think the net price is the right one to show.
Who collects the tax, and why it is not us
PayGlue does not sell you the subscription directly. Our payment provider, Creem, does, as the merchant of record. That is the same model many of the providers we connect to Ghost use, and I explained the model in detail because it matters for publishers too.
For you it means the checkout works out the VAT rate for your country and adds it to the net price. Creem collects that tax and files it. The invoice comes from the merchant of record with the tax on it. PayGlue never sees the tax and never holds it. I could not show you the right gross price on the site even if I wanted to, because I have no idea where you are until you reach the checkout.
Why net and not gross
Two reasons.
The rate varies. A customer in Germany pays 19 percent, in Ireland 23, and a customer in the United States usually pays no VAT at all. There is no single gross price that is true for everyone, so whichever one I put on the site would be wrong for most of the people reading it.
Most of our customers are businesses. A publisher with a VAT ID in the EU pays no VAT through the reverse charge; the invoice says so and the business accounts for it at home. For them the net price is the price. A gross price would be a number they will never pay.
So the honest number is the net one, with a note that VAT is added at checkout based on your country. That note is now on the landing page, the founding page and the plans page in the dashboard.
What to do if you are a business
Enter your VAT ID at checkout. If you are in the EU and outside the merchant of record’s own country, the reverse charge applies: no VAT is added, and the invoice carries the note. If you forget, the merchant of record can correct the invoice afterwards, but it is easier to get right the first time.
If you are outside the EU, VAT usually does not apply at all, and the total matches the net price. A few countries outside the EU have their own digital services tax that the merchant of record collects the same way. The checkout shows it before you confirm, so you will have seen the amount before it turns up on the invoice.
What the invoice shows
The invoice comes from the merchant of record, not from PayGlue, and that surprises some people too. It carries the merchant’s name and tax number, the net price, the VAT line for your country, and the total you were charged. If you entered a VAT ID, it carries the reverse charge note instead of a VAT line.
That is the document your accountant wants. It is also the reason I cannot issue one myself: for tax purposes the sale happened between you and the merchant of record. PayGlue is the product. Creem is the seller. If you need a copy later, it is in the billing section of the dashboard, which links to the merchant’s customer portal.
What changed on the site
Three places now say it. The pricing cards on the landing page carry a line under the button: prices excl. VAT. The founding page says the same above the sign-in note. And the plans page in the dashboard, where an existing customer switches plans, says that VAT is added at checkout based on your country.
The prices themselves did not change. Nine euros was nine euros net before, and it still is. What changed is that the site now says what the checkout was already doing.
For founding members this matters in one more way. The founding price is locked for life, and it is locked as a net price. If your country changes its VAT rate, the gross total on your invoice changes with it, and the net price underneath does not. The net price is what I promised you, and it is the part of the total that stays put.
Why this got its own article
It is a small thing. It would have fitted in a changelog line, and it did. But the confusion behind it is the same one publishers run into with their own readers: who charges the tax, at what rate, and why the number on the page and the number on the invoice differ.
If you sell memberships through a merchant of record yourself, your readers have exactly the same question about your prices. Say excl. VAT where the rate varies, or show the gross price only where you know the country. Either works. What confuses people is saying nothing and leaving the checkout to explain it for you.