The Leakage

You launch a SaaS. You price it at $100/month. You get 10 customers. You think you have $1,000 MRR. You check your bank account. You have $680. What happened?

Leakage.

The Stack of Doom

1. Stripe Fees: 2.9% + 30¢. (The standard tax).
2. Currency Conversion: 1-2%. If you sell globally, you lose money on FX.
3. VAT / GST: The killer.
   • If you sell to a customer in the UK, you owe 20% VAT.
   • If you sell to a customer in Hungary, you owe 27% VAT.
   • Often, these are deducted at source by Merchant of Record services (like Paddle or Lemon Squeezy).

So your $100 becomes $80 immediately.

Refund & Dispute Rates

Chargebacks are expensive. If a user disputes a charge:

1. You lose the $100 revenue.
2. You pay a $15-$25 dispute fee.
3. Your Stripe reputation score drops.

If your dispute rate hits 1%, Visa/Mastercard may ban you.

The Cost of Compliance

"We'll just ignore VAT." This works until you hit a threshold (often $10k-$100k per country). Then the tax authorities come knocking with penalties that can exceed your total revenue.

Using a Merchant of Record costs ~5% flat fee, but it handles the tax liability. This is often cheaper than the legal risk.

Run your numbers through the Net Revenue Calculator. It reveals the sobering reality: Revenue is vanity, Profit is sanity. The gap between the two is where businesses die.