With the frenetic pace of e-commerce development, and the expansive reach of Amazon, eBay, Shopify and other online platforms, independent sellers are now able to address international consumers like never before. In Europe, cross-border commerce already comprises approximately 25% of all e-commerce, and it’s witnessing unprecedented growth at scale. 

However, while this development presents fantastic opportunities for sellers, it is also quickly resulting in unfamiliar liabilities and a deluge of international tax and compliance headaches. Governments, for their part, are cracking down on VAT fraud and inadequate tax collection. The scale of the issue is huge, with €164 billion of uncollected VAT forecast by the European Commission for 2020. 

Over many decades working with e-commerce pioneers such as Etsy, Flipkart and Vinted and defining e-commerce software platforms like Klaviyo, Shogun and Squarespace, we at Accel have witnessed the challenges of compliance only getting harder. So, today we’re thrilled to announce our Series A investment in Taxdoo, the API-driven platform that’s delivering automated compliance for the rapidly growing cross-border e-commerce market and relieving the pain experienced by sellers trying to navigate the tax and compliance minefields.

Based in Hamburg, Germany, Taxdoo’s founders Christian, Roger and Matt, met during their PhDs in economics and finance. Roger had previously spent more than a decade as an international VAT expert in the German ministry of finance, and brings unique insight on the emerging challenges in e-commerce. Since launching in 2017, Taxdoo has grown profitably to serve more than 1,000 merchants and earned a unanimously positive reputation among the e-commerce and tax advisor community in Germany and beyond. 

As the worlds of commerce and finance continue to digitize, we’ve started to observe the emergence of a new generation of infrastructure platforms. By bringing together transaction data from across marketplaces, payments, and accounting platforms, we believe that Taxdoo is ideally positioned to build a category leader as the compliance core for e-commerce. The company is starting in Europe and plans to aggressively scale internationally.

We’re honored to partner with Christian, Roger, Matt and the Taxdoo team as they bring unprecedented automation and peace-of-mind to online businesses, and we’re excited to build a truly transformational company together. Read more about Taxdoo’s next chapter here and Taxdoo’s thoughts here.

-- Harry and Will