How to verify your tax SaaS vendor is registered in every country you file in

Why this matters

When your indirect-tax SaaS vendor lodges a VAT or sales-tax return on your behalf in a foreign country, you are trusting them with two things: the accuracy of the numbers, and the regulatory standing to file at all. Most CFOs verify the first and assume the second. That second assumption is the risky one.

Many countries reserve commercial tax-return preparation for locally licensed practitioners. Germany has the Steuerberater. Australia has the registered BAS agent or tax agent. France has the Tableau de l'Ordre des Experts-Comptables. Japan has the Zeirishi. New York has the NYTPRIN. None of these regimes were drafted with cross-border SaaS in mind, and most of them apply on their face to anyone preparing returns for compensation — even from outside the country.

If your vendor is filing in a jurisdiction where they are not registered, the legal exposure usually sits with the vendor, not with you. But the operational exposure — late filings, refused submissions, regulatory friction, and the cost of switching mid-year — sits squarely with you. This article walks through how to verify any tax SaaS vendor against the relevant public registries before you sign or renew.

Step 1: Identify the operative legal entity

Vendors rarely contract under their brand name. The entity that signs your master services agreement, issues your invoices, and would appear on a public registry is usually a corporate subsidiary several layers down. Before you search any registry, find the exact legal entity for your jurisdiction.

Three places to look:

• Your most recent invoice. The legal entity name appears in the invoice header, the remit-to address, or the tax registration footer.
• The master services agreement. Look for the "this agreement is between you and..." sentence in the first paragraph.
• The vendor's privacy policy or sub-processor list. These pages usually enumerate the regional contracting entities (e.g. *Stripe Technology Company Limited* for EMEA, *Stripe Payments Australia Pty Ltd* for APAC).

Write down the exact spelling. Suffixes matter: *Vendor International Limited* is a different entity from *Vendor International, Inc.* and only one of them will appear on any given registry.

Step 2: Germany — Steuerberaterverzeichnis

The Bundessteuerberaterkammer maintains a public register of every appointed Steuerberater and Steuerberatungsgesellschaft at steuerberaterverzeichnis.berufs-org.de. There is a separate § 3a register for EU-established cross-border temporary service providers at eu-dienstleister-in-steuersachen.berufs-org.de.

To verify a vendor:

1. Open the primary register and switch to English via the language toggle.
2. Search for the vendor's German legal entity name (e.g. *Vendor GmbH*) in the "Name / corporation" field.
3. If you get zero hits, repeat the search on the EU cross-border register.
4. If you get zero hits on both, ask the vendor to point you at their registry entry directly.

A vendor that is filing German VAT for clients should be able to produce either an entry on one of these two registers or a written explanation of why their service model falls outside the reserved activity.

Step 3: Australia — Tax Practitioners Board

The Tax Practitioners Board publishes the entire register of Australian BAS agents and tax agents as a downloadable CSV/XLSX dataset on data.gov.au (search for "TPB Public Register"). The dataset is updated weekly and licensed CC-BY 4.0, so you can search it at scale.

The interactive register is at myprofile.tpb.gov.au/public-register. Search by the vendor's Australian legal entity name and confirm at least one of: (a) BAS agent registration, (b) tax agent registration, (c) a recognised partner relationship with someone who has either.

Step 4: France — SIRENE and the Ordre des Experts-Comptables

France makes this trickier because the company registry (SIRENE) and the regulated activity register (Tableau of the Ordre des Experts-Comptables) are separate. Use both.

1. Open annuaire-entreprises.data.gouv.fr and search for the vendor's French legal entity.
2. Note the NAF activity code on the company's profile.
3. NAF code 69.20Z identifies *Activités comptables* (accounting activities). Anything else — for example, 63.11Z (data processing, hosting, and related activities) or 47.91A (mail-order retail) — is a strong signal that the entity is not providing the regulated expert-comptable activity.
4. For final confirmation that an entity is on the Tableau, the Ordre des Experts-Comptables maintains its own member directory. NAF + Tableau inscription together is the gold standard.

Step 5: Japan and Korea — structural barrier check

Japan and Korea reserve tax filing for locally licensed Zeirishi (税理士) and semusa (세무사) respectively. Both qualifications require passing an examination that is administered exclusively in the local language. There is no foreign-national pathway for either.

The practical implication: no foreign tax SaaS vendor's own corporate entity will appear on either registry by design. If your vendor supports filings in Japan or Korea, ask them which licensed local partner stands behind the filings, and get the partner's licence number in writing. The vendor itself is not the licensed filer; the local partner is.

Step 6: New York — NY Tax Law § 32

Anyone who prepares a New York return for compensation is meant to register with the NY Department of Taxation and Finance under Tax Law § 32, regardless of where they sit. The full register is published as a Socrata dataset on data.ny.gov (dataset ID b7jj-bh4g). You can query it directly with the dataset's full-text search or LIKE filter on the business-name column.

Practical caveat: NY's enforcement has historically focused on individual income tax preparers rather than sales tax SaaS vendors. The statutory text is broad enough to cover a SaaS filer; the enforcement is not. Document the registry absence anyway — it gives you a clear conversation starter with the vendor.

Step 7: What to ask your vendor if they are not on the register

If a registry search comes up empty, the right next step is a written question — not an accusation. Here are three to start:

1. *"Which legal entity holds your registration in {country}, and what is the registration number?"*
2. *"If your operating model relies on a local licensed partner instead of a direct registration, who is that partner and can you share their licence?"*
3. *"If your view is that your service falls outside the local reserved-activity definition, can you point me to the legal opinion or precedent supporting that position?"*

A vendor that has thought about this carefully will have a paragraph-long answer ready. A vendor that hasn't will either go silent or offer marketing language. The quality of the response is itself useful diligence data.

Skip the manual searches

Running ten registry searches for one vendor takes about fifteen minutes. Running them for twenty vendors takes a working day. We did the work for the twenty largest indirect-tax SaaS vendors and built a tool that points you at the exact legal entity and the exact official registry, with one-click verification for each finding.

Pick your vendor and we will show you what we found.