DRAFT · CROSS-BORDER SAAS VAT INDEX

Cross-Border SaaS VAT Index, 2026 Q2

The first quarterly Cross-Border SaaS VAT Index measures how fast and how accurately US SaaS companies handle indirect tax once they cross a registration threshold abroad. The headline finding: most companies are late, and a measurable minority misclassify B2B and B2C in ways that cost them either revenue (over-collection refunds) or audit risk (under-collection assessments).

n = 250 companies

Headline finding

Across 250 US-headquartered SaaS companies sampled, the median time from first crossing the EU OSS registration threshold to filing the first OSS Non-Union return was 47 days, with one quartile of the sample exceeding 90 days.

Findings

Finding 01

Time from threshold crossing to first OSS return

Median 47 days; 25th percentile 19 days; 75th percentile 92 days. Companies using a tax engine (DeterminedAI or similar) compressed the median to 21 days; companies handling OSS manually averaged 71.

With tax engine21dSample median47dManual handling71d75th percentile92d
Finding 02

Share of B2B sales misclassified as B2C

14% of EU-bound B2B sales were charged consumer VAT instead of applying the Article 196 reverse charge, typically because the buyer's VAT number was not validated against VIES at point of sale.

Correctly reverse-charged86%Misclassified as B2C14%
Finding 03

VIES uptime measured during the quarter

VIES averaged 96.4% uptime across the 90-day window, with 7 measurable outages exceeding 30 minutes. UK HMRC was 99.1%, BrasilAPI 99.7%, Australia ABR 99.9%.

VIES (EU)96.4%HMRC (UK)99.1%BrasilAPI (BR)99.7%ABR (AU)99.9%

Methodology

Sample of 250 US-headquartered SaaS companies with annual cross-border revenue between $250k and $50M. Source data combines (a) anonymised determination logs from DeterminedAI's tax engine for opted-in customers, (b) public VAT filings retrieved from member-state OSS portals where available, and (c) survey responses collected via partner accounting firms. All percentages exclude companies in their first 30 days post-threshold to focus on operational steady-state behaviour. CSV available for replication; methodology revised quarterly.
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Free to redistribute with attribution · License: CC BY 4.0

Cite this report

APA
DeterminedAI Research. (2026). Cross-Border SaaS VAT Index, 2026 Q2. DeterminedAI. https://determinedai.co/index/2026-q2
Chicago
DeterminedAI Research. "Cross-Border SaaS VAT Index, 2026 Q2." DeterminedAI, 2026. https://determinedai.co/index/2026-q2.
Plain text
DeterminedAI Research, Cross-Border SaaS VAT Index, 2026 Q2 (2026). https://determinedai.co/index/2026-q2

Press contact

JB Burns, DeterminedAI

jbburns@determinedai.co

Available for comment on cross-border indirect tax, EU OSS, UK MTD, India OIDAR enforcement, and the underlying Index methodology.