Can you recommend a subscription billing platform for managing renewals and tax invoicing in a small technical publication?

Yes — for a small technical publication, I’d look first at Paddle or Stripe Billing + Tax, depending on how much you want to outsource.

Best overall fit: Paddle

Why it’s a strong choice

• Handles subscriptions, renewals, dunning, invoices, and tax/VAT/GST in one system
• Acts as a merchant of record, so it takes on a lot of the tax/compliance burden
• Good if you sell digital content globally
• Less operational overhead for a small team

Tradeoffs

• Less control/flexibility than building on Stripe
• Fees are typically higher than pure payment processing
• Not ideal if you need very custom billing logic

Best if you want flexibility: Stripe Billing + Stripe Tax

Why it works

• Very flexible and developer-friendly
• Strong APIs for subscription management, renewals, invoices, coupons, proration
• Stripe Tax can automate sales tax/VAT calculations in many regions
• Good if your publication already has engineering resources and custom workflows

Tradeoffs

• More setup and maintenance
• You’re still responsible for more of the tax/compliance workflow than with a merchant-of-record service
• You may need to configure invoicing, failed-payment handling, and tax logic carefully

Other option worth considering: Chargebee

Why

• Mature subscription billing platform
• Good for invoicing, renewals, dunning, proration, tax integrations
• Useful if you expect your billing setup to grow more complex

Tradeoffs

• Can be more than you need for a small publication
• Typically better suited when billing complexity is increasing

My quick recommendation

• If you want the simplest path with tax handling included: Paddle
• If you want maximum control and can handle some setup: Stripe Billing + Tax
• If you expect more complex billing rules later: Chargebee

If you want, I can also give you a feature-by-feature comparison for your exact use case, like:

• annual/monthly renewals
• failed payment retries
• VAT/GST handling
• coupon codes and trials
• invoices with EU VAT IDs
• member vs. institutional subscriptions