Tax for marketplaces, where a Merchant of Record stops working.

Why it exists

If you sell your own product, a Merchant of Record will swallow this problem for you — use one. It becomes the legal seller and the VAT stops being your concern.

That model breaks the moment your vendors are the real sellers and you only take a cut. An MoR assumes one seller; a marketplace has hundreds, in different countries, each with their own registration status. The calculation lands back on the platform, per transaction. That is who this is for.

The rate depends on where the buyer is, where that seller is, and whether the buyer is a business. Get it wrong and you eat the tax or fail an audit.

Coverage

EU-27 + UK VAT · US state-level sales tax · Canada GST/HST/PST · Australia GST. Rates last reviewed 2026-07.

Authentication

When API_KEYS is configured on the deployment, /rate and /decide require one of:

• Header X-API-Key: <key>
• Header Authorization: Bearer <key>
• Query ?api_key=<key>

/health, /openapi.json, and this docs page are always open. RapidAPI proxy may use X-RapidAPI-Proxy-Secret when configured.

API reference

GET /health

Liveness probe. Returns status, version, lastReviewed.

curl "https://checkout-tax-api.pages.dev/health"

GET /openapi.json

OpenAPI 3.0 specification for client generation and marketplace import.

GET /rate

200 response fields: country, countryName, region, regionName, taxType, rate, productType, taxable, notes[], source

curl "https://checkout-tax-api.pages.dev/rate?country=DE&product_type=digital"

POST / GET /decide

200 response fields: chargeVat, mechanism (standard|reverse_charge|zero_rated|out_of_scope), rate, taxType, buyerType, sellerCountry, buyerCountry, vatId, invoiceNote, legalBasis, notes[], disclaimer

curl -X POST "https://checkout-tax-api.pages.dev/decide" \

  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \

  -d '{"seller_country":"DE","buyer_country":"FR","buyer_vat_id":"FRXX123456789"}'

CORS

OPTIONS on any path returns 204 with Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * for browser clients.

Error responses

Errors use shape { "error": { "code": "...", "message": "..." } }:

Quick start

JavaScript (fetch)

const res = await fetch("https://checkout-tax-api.pages.dev/decide", {

  method: "POST",

  headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },

  body: JSON.stringify({

    seller_country: "DE",

    buyer_country: "FR",

    buyer_vat_id: "FRXX123456789",

  }),

});

const decision = await res.json();

Pricing

Disclaimer