> the tax engine knows that I do not need any additional information for subscriptions that are US-based or based in other countries as I have no obligations to collect tax there
Is this true? Don't you always have to collect/pay local taxes if you are selling stuff in a country? For example, you sell to a customer in Germany, your price must include German VAT.
You are right. It doesn't excuse Stripe Tax, but a business can have both presence nexuses (ie we sell from there) and sales nexuses (ie we sell enough to there that the local laws say we need to register and collect taxes).
The details vary for the EU depending on whether the product is business-to-consumer or B2B and what kind of volume we're talking about. Some countries, such as the US, have a double taxation treaty with the EU that allows you to use a self-charge VAT structure when you do small amount of sales which has the effect of not needing the US seller to register for VAT, provided your tax authority (ie the IRS) authorizes you to participate under that treaty.
Correct handling of sales tax/VAT globally is complicated and I definitely had a "oh honey" moment when reading that sentence as well.
Is this true? Don't you always have to collect/pay local taxes if you are selling stuff in a country? For example, you sell to a customer in Germany, your price must include German VAT.