The platform as merchant

For digital products in the major stores, the store sells to the consumer, and you sell to the store. Take a download in Germany, or an in-app purchase in Japan. In both cases, the platform works out the local consumer tax, collects it, and pays it over. Those returns are in the store's name. The store's monthly financial report becomes your record of what sold where.

What you invoice, and to whom

Your supply is making the app available to the platform. If the platform entity is based in the EU, that counts as a business-to-business service, invoiced VAT-free under the reverse charge. If the entity is based outside the EU, the supply falls outside EU VAT. In practice, you base your invoice on the platform's settlement report. Keep those reports on file, because they are your revenue evidence for seven years.

How to book the payouts

Book revenue gross, with the store commission as a separate cost. Keep the commission and the revenue on separate lines. Your books then show the same sales and commission figures as the store's settlement reports. As a result, the tax authority has fewer reasons to ask questions later. For the full month-end routine, including currencies, see payment-provider payouts and your Dutch books.

Every quarter and every year, a Dutch company keeps records and files returns. What does it cost to hand this work over? See bookkeeping in the Netherlands for owners abroad.

Where your own VAT duties resume

You can also sell alongside the stores, for example through a web subscription or a pro tier on your own checkout. There, you are the seller yourself, with the full OSS scheme for EU consumers and the country-by-country rules outside the EU. Many founders do both. Keep the two kinds of revenue apart in the bookkeeping.