Serbian VAT on Stripe Digital Services in QuickBooks

A software company in Austin sells a €15 monthly plan. A designer in Novi Sad subscribes. Stripe's view is simple: Serbia wants you registered from that first sale, and you can only register through a local tax representative. Serbia's VAT Law agrees, and adds a detail that makes the choice of representative more than paperwork: the representative is jointly and severally liable for everything you owe, including fines and interest. The rate is 20 percent. New registrants file monthly, and the return and the payment are both due 15 days after the period ends.

Stripe's Serbia entry gives the short version: "Remote sellers providing electronically supplied services (digital products) to individuals in Serbia have to register for tax from their first sale there." It lists the registration threshold as "1 transaction," marks the country "Representative required," and says: "To register to collect tax, you need to appoint a tax representative in Serbia." Stripe has supported Serbia since 7 October 2024, according to its supported countries table.

This guide works from the Tax Administration's (Poreska uprava) general VAT guidance, the page Stripe links as Serbia's official resource, and from the VAT Law (Zakon o porezu na dodatu vrednost) in the consolidated text on paragraf.rs. That text is unofficial and already includes the amendment published in Official Gazette 80/2026, parts of which apply only from 1 January 2027, so confirm article wording with your representative. Quotes are our translations from Serbian. It is bookkeeping guidance, not tax advice.

Acodei brings Stripe Tax amounts into QuickBooks, so the Serbian VAT you collect lands in a liability account you can check before each payment. Start a free trial.

Who is caught: electronic services to people in Serbia

The place of supply decides it. Article 12 of the VAT Law sets the place of supply for services "supplied to a person who is not a taxable person" as the "seat, domicile or residence of the recipient," and point (12) of that list is services "supplied electronically." A consumer in Serbia buying your app, course or SaaS plan is caught. Where a customer's domicile and residence are in different places, Article 12 says the residence (boravište) decides.

The law leaves the detail of how you prove where a customer is to a ministerial rulebook on "criteria and presumptions" for locating the recipient. We didn't review that rulebook, so treat the evidence question as one for your representative.

Stripe Tax works from one address per customer. For invoices and subscriptions it uses one location: the shipping address if there is one, then the billing address, then the payment method's details, then the IP address. Where that location is Serbia, Stripe treats the sale as Serbian. Stripe also limits its own scope: "In Serbia, Stripe only supports collecting VAT for digital products," and "you must be a remote seller without a physical presence in the country." Check the product tax codes on your products before you add the registration in Stripe.

There is no threshold for foreign sellers

Serbia does have a registration threshold. Article 38 requires a business whose turnover "in the previous 12 months" exceeds 8,000,000 dinars to register "within five days." It doesn't help a foreign seller.

Article 10a of the VAT Law, quoted almost word for word in the Tax Administration's guidance: a foreign person making taxable supplies in Serbia "is obliged to appoint a tax representative and register for VAT, regardless of the amount of that turnover in the previous 12 months." Stripe's "1 transaction" is the same rule seen from its side.

The one way out in Article 10a is narrow. A foreign person that supplies "exclusively" to VAT payers (and to the public bodies listed in Article 9) doesn't have to appoint a representative or register. One consumer sale ends that exemption. A seller with a mix of business and consumer customers in Serbia has to register.

The tax representative: liable for everything you owe

This is the part of Serbian VAT that deserves the most care. Under Article 10a, as summarized by the Tax Administration:

• Who can act. An individual, sole trader or company "resident or seated in the Republic," "registered for VAT for at least 12 months" before the request, with no overdue public revenue debts, and approved by a ruling of the tax authority. Your own permanent establishment in Serbia can't be your representative, and you can appoint "only one."
• What they do. The representative acts "in the name and for the account of" the foreign person for every VAT duty: "submitting the registration application, calculating VAT, issuing invoices, submitting tax returns, paying VAT and other."
• What they risk. The representative "is jointly and severally liable for all obligations of the foreign person as a VAT payer," including on deregistration, "and in particular for the payment of VAT, penalties and interest."

That third point explains how representatives price the service and why most ask for a deposit or for the VAT in advance of each deadline. It also means a representative will want to see your data, not just a total. Our tax representative entry covers how the role works in other countries.

The paperwork runs through the Tax Administration's ePorezi portal. Its forms list includes the VAT registration application, the VAT return, and a "request for approval of tax representation for VAT," all filed electronically. The portal is accessed with a qualified electronic certificate, which in practice means the representative files for you.

Three things to agree before you switch Serbia on in Stripe:

• How you fund each payment. The tax is due 15 days after the period ends, and the representative is on the hook if you are late.
• What data they get. The itemized export filtered on country_code RS gives them every line, with the customer location Stripe used.
• How business customers are treated. See the section below. It is the question where Serbia differs most from its neighbors.

The rate: 20 percent

Article 23: "The general VAT rate for taxable supplies of goods and services or imports of goods is 20%." The reduced rate is 10 percent, for a list of goods and services in the same article. We found no category for electronic services on that list, so treat 20 percent as the rate unless your representative says otherwise.

A €15 subscription priced exclusive of tax carries €3 of VAT. Priced inclusive, €15 contains €2.50 of VAT (€15 × 20 / 120).

When the tax is due on a sale

Article 16 sets the tax point at the earliest of the supply itself or "collection, or payment, if the consideration or part of it is collected or paid in money before" the supply. A Stripe subscription charges at the start of each billing period, so the payment comes first and the VAT falls on the payment date. That also settles annual plans: the whole year's VAT belongs to the month the customer paid.

Article 16 has a second trigger worth knowing. For licences of copyright and similar rights (the services in Article 5(3)(1)) and for "technical support when using software, hardware and other equipment for a certain period," the tax point is the issue of the invoice. On a Stripe subscription, the invoice and the payment normally happen the same day, so the answer is the same.

Stripe uses its own moment. Stripe Tax considers transactions "effective on the date they finalize," per its tax reports documentation, "and we don't recalculate taxes afterwards." For a card subscription that finalizes and charges at once, that matches Article 16.

Filing and paying: monthly to start, 15 days after the period

• The period. Article 48 sets two periods, the calendar month and the calendar quarter. Monthly applies to a business with more than 50,000,000 dinars of turnover in the previous 12 months, quarterly to one below it. For a new registrant the rule is fixed: "for the current and the following calendar year the tax period is the calendar month." So a foreign seller registered in 2026 files monthly through the end of 2027.
• The return. Article 50: filed "within 15 days after the end of the tax period," and filed "regardless of whether" any VAT is due, so a month with no Serbian sales is still a nil return.
• The payment. Article 51: VAT is paid "within the deadline for submitting the tax return."

So March's VAT is due by 15 April, with the return. That is the same calendar as Montenegro's, and faster than the EU One Stop Shop's quarterly cycle.

One change is coming. The amendment in Official Gazette 80/2026 adds a "preliminary tax return" (preliminarna poreska prijava) that is filed as an attachment to the VAT return, and its transitional provisions end the current VAT calculation summary (POPDV) with the periods to December 2026. That is our reading of the consolidated text, not Tax Administration guidance. Ask your representative what changes for you in 2027.

Pricing in euros or dollars: the National Bank rate

The return is in dinars. Stripe supports RSD as a presentment currency, but most foreign sellers price in euros or dollars. Article 22: if the consideration "is expressed in a foreign currency," the conversion uses "the middle exchange rate of the central bank, or the contracted rate, valid on the day the tax liability arises."

That is a per-transaction rule tied to the Article 16 tax point. Stripe converts on its own terms: its tax reports say that where currencies differ, Stripe Tax "converts amounts using available exchange rates at the time of the transaction to calculate the filing currency." The National Bank of Serbia's middle rate and Stripe's rate on the same day will be close but not identical, so expect the representative's dinar figure and Stripe's to differ slightly every month. Agree which one the return uses, and keep it.

Business customers: who owes the VAT depends on whether you are registered

Stripe's line is: "Sales to business customers in Serbia don't trigger any tax registration obligations because unregistered sellers aren't required to collect tax on these sales." The VAT Law gets there through Article 10, which makes the recipient the person liable for the tax (the tax debtor) "if the foreign person is not a VAT payer in the Republic." A Serbian company buying from an unregistered foreign seller accounts for the VAT itself. Our reverse charge entry explains the mechanism.

Notice the condition: "if the foreign person is not a VAT payer." A seller with consumer sales in Serbia is registered, so read literally, Article 10 no longer shifts the tax on its business sales to the buyer, and the general rule in Article 10(1)(1) makes the seller, through the representative, the debtor. That is the opposite of how most EU sellers think about B2B sales of digital services, and it is the question to settle with your representative before your first invoice to a Serbian company.

Stripe's tax ID table points the same way by accident. Its customer tax ID table lists rs_pib (Serbian PIB number) with "Impact in Tax Calculation: No." So storing a Serbian customer's PIB doesn't stop Stripe charging 20 percent. If your representative confirms that registered sellers charge VAT to Serbian businesses, that default is what you want. If they read it differently, you would need to mark those customers yourself, for example by setting the customer's tax exemption status to reverse charge. Either way, test it: create a customer with an rs_pib, preview an invoice, and look at the tax line.

A worked example: one month

A US software company has a Serbia registration in Stripe, through a representative in Belgrade. Its plans are priced in euros, exclusive of tax. In March:

• 200 consumers pay the €15 monthly plan: €3,000 of sales and €600 of VAT.
• 10 consumers buy the €150 annual plan: €1,500 of sales and €300 of VAT, all in March under Article 16.
• One consumer gets a full refund through a credit note on a monthly invoice: −€15 and −€3.
• Four Serbian companies buy the monthly plan, with a PIB stored: €60 of sales. Stripe charges €12 of VAT on them, because rs_pib doesn't affect the calculation.

Stripe's March figures for Serbia: €909 of VAT (€600 + €300 − €3 + €12). The representative converts each sale at the National Bank middle rate for its tax point. At an illustrative 117 dinars to the euro, that is about 106,353 dinars, filed and paid by 15 April. Two checks before it goes out:

• The business sales. If the representative agrees that a registered seller owes VAT on them, the €12 is on your return. If not, the four invoices were overcharged and need credit notes.
• The rate. A month of daily rates won't reproduce Stripe's filing-currency total to the dinar. Agree the tolerance once.

What reaches QuickBooks, and what you book yourself

Acodei brings Stripe Tax amounts into QuickBooks in one of two ways. With the tax product approach, every Stripe Tax amount goes onto one line, a non-inventory product mapped to a liability account, and you use Stripe's tax reports to split it by country. With QuickBooks tax rate mapping, which is for QuickBooks companies outside the US, you map each Stripe tax rate ID to a QuickBooks tax code, so each line carries its own code. Our entry on the QuickBooks tax code covers the second.

For March, that means:

• Sales. €909 of Serbian VAT in the tax liability account, on the sales records Acodei creates from Stripe.
• The refund. It went through a credit note, so the tax on it reaches QuickBooks with the line-level breakdown. A refund issued against the payment alone, without a credit note, doesn't carry that breakdown, and the tax on it may need a manual adjustment in QuickBooks.
• The payment to the representative. This is yours to record. Debit the tax liability for the euro amount, debit the representative's fee to an expense account, and credit the bank for what you sent. The difference between the euro liability and what the dinar payment actually cost goes to exchange gain or loss.

The same liability account usually holds every country Stripe Tax collects for. Our guide to reconciling the Stripe Tax report in QuickBooks covers how to split it, and checking that the Serbian slice nets to zero after each payment is the quickest way to catch a missed month.

How Serbia compares with its neighbors

Serbia sits with the countries that register you from the first consumer sale, through someone local. Montenegro has required a representative for foreign digital sellers since February 2026, and North Macedonia works the same way. What sets Serbia apart is the representative's joint and several liability, written into the law, and the business-customer question above. Our guide to the countries that register you from the first sale covers the wider group.

Common mistakes with Serbian VAT on Stripe sales

• Assuming the 8,000,000 dinar threshold applies. Article 10a says foreign persons register regardless of turnover.
• Turning on the Stripe registration before the representative is approved. Stripe starts charging 20 percent, and nobody is filing.
• Filing quarterly in your first years. New registrants file monthly for the current and the following calendar year.
• Skipping nil months. The return is due even when nothing was sold.
• Copying the EU or Montenegrin B2B treatment. Once you are registered, Serbian law may put the VAT on your business sales on you. Ask.
• Expecting rs_pib to change the calculation. Stripe's table says it doesn't.
• Treating the representative as a mailbox. They are liable for your VAT, penalties and interest, and they will expect to be paid on time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do foreign SaaS companies have to register for VAT in Serbia?

Yes, if they sell electronic services to consumers there. Article 10a of the VAT Law requires a foreign person making taxable supplies in Serbia to appoint a tax representative and register, regardless of turnover. Stripe lists the threshold as one transaction.

Do I need a tax representative in Serbia?

Yes. A foreign seller registers through a representative approved by the Tax Administration. The representative must be resident in Serbia, VAT-registered for at least 12 months, and free of overdue tax debts, and is jointly and severally liable for the foreign seller's VAT, penalties and interest.

What is the VAT rate on digital services in Serbia?

20 percent, the general rate under Article 23 of the VAT Law. The 10 percent reduced rate covers a list of goods and services with no category for electronic services. A €15 subscription priced exclusive of tax carries €3 of VAT.

When are Serbian VAT returns due?

Within 15 days after the end of the tax period, and the VAT is paid by the same deadline. New registrants use the calendar month for the current and the following calendar year. A return is due even for a period with no sales.

Does Stripe Tax charge Serbian business customers?

By default, yes: Stripe's tax ID table lists the Serbian PIB (rs_pib) as having no impact on the calculation. Under the VAT Law, a business buyer accounts for the VAT only when the foreign seller isn't registered in Serbia, so a registered seller should confirm the treatment with its representative.

The short version

Twenty percent from the first consumer sale, through a representative who is jointly liable for your VAT, penalties and interest. New registrants file monthly, with the return and payment due 15 days after each month. Euro and dollar prices are converted at the National Bank of Serbia's middle rate on the tax point, so the representative's figure and Stripe's will differ slightly. Once you are registered, business sales may be your VAT too, and Stripe charges them by default. In QuickBooks, the Serbian slice of the tax liability account should be back at zero after every payment.

Acodei syncs Stripe Tax into QuickBooks, so each Serbian month starts from the liability account instead of a spreadsheet. Start a free trial.