This week in Taxtech
Things have been pretty quiet for me this week on the news front as I’ve been head down recreating some of the vendor profile graphics and upgrading the analyst reports, although I was excited to hear about Taxwire’s Series A funding of $25M, which comes very quickly off the back of their pre-seed and seed raises,
I spoke with their founder Andrew Rea a couple weeks ago and I can tell you he’s one smart guy and that team is moving like lightning, maybe more on that / from him later if I’m lucky!
This also got me thinking about funding velocity, which IMO is increasing and this as a proxy for market growth, so I took a basic look at the US Sales and Use tax challenger market with the help of Claude. It would seem to correlate with slowing growth amongst the larger players that we saw in a previous issue
I’ll definitely be drilling into this a bit further when we come round to looking at that group more closely but in the meantime here’s a snapshot of some of the main players and their funding history/velocity.
If nothing else it tells us that that segment of the market is hot right now and there are increasingly good options for buyers and career pathing.
Now enjoy the issue where we’ll take a look at European SMB VAT challenger Quaderno.
⭐ Vendor Spotlight: Quaderno
The Tax Sidekick Visma Bought, Not Built
Quaderno didn’t get acquired because it was broken. It got acquired because a 13-person team in the Canary Islands had quietly built the cleanest self-serve VAT engine for digital sellers in the market — and a €2.8bn Norwegian software group wanted in. The question now: does Visma’s money turn this into something bigger, or just a nicer-funded version of the same small thing?
What Quaderno actually is
Quaderno is a self-serve tax compliance platform for digital sellers: VAT/GST/sales tax calculation, OSS/IOSS handling, compliant invoicing, threshold monitoring, and — newly — Peppol e-invoicing. Its centre of gravity is Stripe and Shopify, not SAP. Coverage runs deep on digital services tax across 100+ countries and all 50 US states, and shallow everywhere else: no ERP connectors, no CTC clearance models, no SAF-T. At roughly 13–17 people and an estimated ~$3.6M ARR, this is a micro-team punching well above its size on customer experience. The buyers who belong here are SaaS founders, e-learning platforms, and Stripe-native digital sellers — not finance teams managing ERP.
Where it beats the baseline
Against the market’s table stakes — accuracy, jurisdiction coverage, integration depth, support — Quaderno clears the bar on exactly the dimensions that matter to its segment and ignores the rest deliberately. Integration depth into payment processors and e-commerce platforms (Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce, Kajabi, Teachable) is genuinely strong, and it’s the only tax compliance tool in its class with a native Zapier integration. Customer support is the standout: response times in hours, reviewers loyal since 2017. Where it sits below baseline is breadth — no SAP/Oracle/Dynamics, no SI ecosystem, and pricing that quietly punishes high-volume micro-transaction sellers.
Portfolio read
This is not a portfolio built through acquisition — Quaderno has made zero acquisitions; it is the acquisition. The product evolved in a straight line: VAT lookup → US sales tax → API platform → managed filing → Peppol. Visma’s September 2023 deal is the one structural break in that history, and it shows up in exactly one place so far: a Belgium-only Peppol e-invoicing launch in January 2026, timed neatly to Belgium’s own B2B mandate. That’s a sensible first move, not a transformation. The real tell will be whether Visma lets Quaderno integrate with Holded (its Spanish SMB accounting sibling) or keeps the Spanish portfolio siloed.
Fit scores
B2B/B2C digital services: 3 – Strong fit. Built for this exact use case — OSS, IOSS, OIDAR, reverse charge, all present.
B2C goods: 2 – Good fit. OSS/IOSS works for small physical sellers; no multi-warehouse logic.
B2B goods: 1 – Patchy fit. No supply-chain or customs logic.
B2B/B2C services (non-digital): 1 – Patchy fit. Basic invoicing only.
Small: 3 – Strong fit. Sub-hour setup, sub-$150/month, this is the home turf.
Medium: 2 – Good fit. Works, but governance gaps (no approval chains, no exemption workflow) start to show.
Large: 0 – Poor fit. No ERP, no SLA, no partner ecosystem. Don’t shortlist.
Segment archetype fit
Digital businesses (SaaS, e-learning): 3 – Strong fit. This is the core ICP, and it shows — best-in-class value at sub-$150/month.
Cross-border e-commerce: 2 – Good fit. OSS/IOSS and Shopify-native handling work well; physical goods complexity is out of scope.
Marketplace sellers: 2 – Good fit. Quaderno Connect’s API embed opens this up, but evidence of major marketplace customers at scale is thin.
Accounting / tax service-led clients: 2 – Good fit. The accountant portal makes it a workable handoff tool, not a practice management platform.
Hybrid managed-service buyers: 2 – Good fit. Self-serve plus managed OSS/US filing is a real combination, just geographically shallow beyond those two regimes.
Multinational enterprise finance teams: 0 – Poor fit. No ERP, no SI ecosystem, no CTC. Structural non-starter.
Delivery model fit
Software-only: 3 – Strong fit. The native model — fast self-serve, plug-and-play with Stripe/Shopify.
Marketplace / self-serve: 3 – Strong fit. Sub-hour implementation and a 7-day free trial remove all the friction that matters at this segment.
Software + managed services: 2 – Good fit. The managed OSS/US filing add-on is genuinely useful, but its full geographic reach isn’t well documented.
White-label / OEM: 2 – Good fit. Quaderno Connect enables embedded tax for platforms — a real but underproven product.
Managed services-led: 1 – Patchy fit. Filing exists as an add-on, not a full BPO delivery model. Don’t expect this to replace a compliance outsourcing relationship.
Customer and employee signal
Customer sentiment is consistently strong everywhere it’s visible — G2 and Capterra both land around 4.3, Trustpilot’s 59 reviews skew heavily positive, and the dominant theme across every platform is the same: setup is fast and support actually answers. The one recurring gripe is pricing at high-volume, low-value transaction counts — a direct symptom of the per-transaction model. On the employee side, there’s almost nothing to read: no Glassdoor, no RepVue, team too small to register. What we can infer is more telling than what’s missing — founder Carlos Hernández Medina stayed on as MD post-acquisition, and that kind of retention usually means the culture wasn’t broken enough to need fixing.
If you’re buying…
If you’re a SaaS founder or digital seller on Stripe or Shopify doing under ~€50M with a lean finance team, put this on the shortlist without much agonising — it’s hard to beat on value and setup speed. If you’re an e-commerce business with real IOSS exposure, use it for calculation but line up a separate intermediary for the filing obligation; Quaderno isn’t one. If your tax footprint touches SAP, CTC mandates, or anything ERP-shaped, this is a non-starter — don’t waste a procurement cycle on it. Watch the Peppol rollout pace over the next 18 months: Belgium is the easy one, and France or Germany will tell you whether Visma is actually investing or just maintaining.
For prospective employees: strong move if you want founder-adjacent ownership and a customer-obsessed culture inside a stable, well-capitalised parent — Visma’s retain-and-fund model is genuinely low-drama by PE standards. Less appealing if you’re chasing fast career scaling: a 15-person team isn’t building a leadership ladder anytime soon, and the Canary Islands location limits the senior tax-domain talent pool you’ll be working alongside. No RepVue or Glassdoor data exists to sanity-check sales-org health, so if you’re interviewing for a commercial role, ask directly about quota structure and territory design rather than assuming.
Want the full 27 page analyst report?
A selection of of opportunities to connect in person and interact online over the next few weeks
July 2026
Global Withholding Tax Summit 2026 (In-Person)
Withholding Tax Summit | July 1, 2026 | London, UK Conference dedicated to withholding tax and cross-border compliance challenges, with emphasis on regulatory change and digitalisation.
Event Page → https://withholdingtaxsummit.com/
August 2026
US International Tax Course 2026 (Course)
TEI — Tax Executives Institute | 3–7 August 2026 | Seattle, WA, TEI’s intensive week-long course for in-house tax professionals covering the full spectrum of US international tax — from Subpart F and GILTI through FDII, BEAT, and transfer pricing — with substantial CPE credit available.
*any organisers or events I’ve missed? please let me know.
A curated selection of blogs, white-papers and on demand content published by multiple organisartions across the landscape, organised into a themed learning path.
MONTH TWO · JULY 2026
E-Invoicing, CTC & the Live Mandate Landscape
Belgium is in full enforcement. France’s September 2026 deadline is six weeks away. Poland’s KSeF soft-landing period is closing. Norway has just accelerated its mandatory timeline. Brazil’s dual-VAT transition is live. Comarch, Basware, Marosa, Innovate Tax, and Sovos are the specialist lenses for this month — alongside Fonoa and Vertex for the platform and maturity dimensions.
Week 5 · 6–10 July
The Global CTC Landscape: What 80+ Live Mandates Actually Look Like
📖Continuous Transaction Controls: The Future of Compliance Sovos 12–15 min
📖Streamline the Future #6: Reporting Built for Global E-Invoicing Operations Comarch 8–10 min
📖2025 in Review: 5 Trends That Defined the Indirect Tax Industry Innovate Tax 8–10 min
Week total: 3 articles · ~28–35 min
Week 6 · 13–17 July
ViDA, Belgium & the European Mandate Wave
Basware’s recently confirmed accreditation as a certified French PDP (Plateforme de Dématérialisation Partenaire) makes it one of the most credible voices on France’s September 2026 mandate. The Comarch / Forrester webinar from January 2026 remains the most authoritative external analysis of the global e-invoicing technology landscape — covering GenAI, agentic AI, Peppol, and the 2026–2027 mandate timeline in 60 minutes.
📖 What is ViDA? VAT in the Digital Age Initiative Q&A Pagero (Thomson Reuters) 12–15 min
📖5 Things We Can Learn from Belgium’s 2026 E-Invoicing Mandate Innovate Tax 8–10 min
🎥E-Invoicing Trends and Obligations: 2026 and Beyond (feat. Forrester) Comarch / Forrester 60 min
Week total: 2 articles + 1 webinar · ~80–85 min
Week 7 · 20–24 July
Emerging Markets & Platform Architecture: Brazil, Norway & Building for Scale
Brazil’s 2026 CBS/IBS tax reform is the most structurally significant emerging market e-invoicing development of the year — Fonoa’s guide is the most accessible and detailed available for non-specialists. Marosa’s country monitoring brings a European VAT compliance partner’s practical lens on the mandates moving fastest right now (Norway’s just-announced acceleration, Spain’s reactivated B2B requirement). Vertex’s platform consolidation argument provides the architectural counterpoint.
📖Brazil 2026 Tax Reform: Key E-Invoicing Changes Fonoa 10–12 min
📖E-Invoicing in Norway and Latest European VAT Updates Marosa VAT 8–10 min
📖Leading the Charge: E-Invoicing as the Cornerstone of Future Compliance Vertex Inc. 10–12 min
Week total: 3 articles · ~28–34 min
Week 8 · 27–31 July
The Buyer’s Market: Evaluating VAT & E-Invoicing Tools Across the Vendor Spectrum
This week deliberately introduces the buyer’s perspective — how do you navigate a market that now runs from $49/month Quaderno for SaaS B2C through to Comarch, EDICOM, and Basware serving Fortune 500 multinationals? Kintsugi’s cross-border VAT guide maps the mid-market options clearly. The Sovos webinar provides the live regulatory update that anchors the month. Avalara’s AI webinar closes the loop on how automation is being embedded into compliance workflows in 2026.
📖8 Best Cross-Border VAT Compliance Software: 2026 Guide Kintsugi 12–15 min
🎥VAT Snapshot: From Poland to the UAE — Preparing for 2026 Mandates Sovos 45–60 min
🎥Embracing the Future of Tax Compliance with AI Avalara 45–60 min
Week total: 1 article + 2 webinars · ~102–135 min
Month Two total: 9 articles + 3 webinars · ~238–289 min
*any cool content I’ve missed? please let me know.
A selection of open roles across tax tech vendors and tax advisory/consulting businesses who are involved in tax technology.
Use the column headers to sort, or the search function and don’t forget to navigate all pages!
*I do this using an AI agent and due to the volume, I don’t check every link, so please let me know if any of these don’t work or have disappeared when you follow them.
✌ Last thoughts
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