Avalara Expands Transactional Tax Compliance Expertise with Acquisition of Tax GIS/Mapping Technology Company
With the Purchase of New Horizons Systems, LLC, Avalara adds Martin Sohovich to compliance product management team
Bainbridge Island, WA - June 10, 2008 - Avalara (www.avalara.com), the leading provider of sales, use and VAT tax automation solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, today announced the hire of Martin Sohovich, an innovator in the sales tax industry and an expert in tax jurisdiction assignment for transactional taxes. In his new role, Sohovich will be responsible for imparting his development expertise in spatial boundaries and data sets to increase AvaTax’s already highly sophisticated mapping technology.
The company also announced that it has completed the acquisition of New Horizons Systems, LLC, one of only three data providers of geographic tax determination within the United States.
Previously, Sohovich was president of New Horizons Systems and prior to his role at New Horizons, he was director of product management at Group 1 Software for GeoTAX, a local sales and use tax rate locator.
Sohovich brings 25 years of expertise in architecting sales tax solutions with specialized knowledge in the design, development, marketing and sales of location-mapping intelligence used for precision transactional tax jurisdictional assignment and situs determination.
Sohovich is also a recognized industry expert on the Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) Project and at Avalara, will provide additional insight and recommendations on SST. Serving as a technical advisor to the Project’s governing board from 2001 to 2005, Sohovich helped develop technical product requirements for certified service providers (CSPs). While in this role, Sohovich worked closely with Avalara, one of only three industry-approved CSPs.
“With his extensive background and expertise in tax jurisdictions, Marty is a tremendous asset to our team,” said Scott McFarlane, chief executive officer of Avalara. “Sales tax issues have become increasingly complicated and costly for small to medium-sized businesses. With the addition of Marty, we are building on our expertise, allowing for the growth and innovation of our core product, AvaTax. Marty’s knowledge will positively impact Avalara’s growth into the future as Avalara continues its leadership role in providing a Web-based sales tax solution, offering the fastest, easiest, most accurate and affordable way for businesses to manage sales and use tax compliance.”
The New Horizons Systems acquisition continues to bring innovative intellectual property and specialized GIS/mapping technology in-house to Avalara. The addition of tax geometry software enables Avalara to offer strategic tax jurisdiction and mapping capabilities to its already highly sophisticated AvaTax service. The enhanced capabilities greatly improve the transaction sourcing accuracy for every AvaTax customer. To date, Avalara is the only provider in North America offering end-to-end sales tax management services with this level of geographic information system mapping technology (GIS).
About AvaTax™:
AvaTax is the market-leading Web-service-based sales tax solution for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) that instantly and accurately calculates sales tax for clients and provides detailed, real-time reporting, and effortless returns and remittance. AvaTax seamlessly integrates with a multitude of SMB financial applications and serves more businesses than any other solution on the market today. Additionally, with AvaTax On-Demand™, developers can integrate Avalara’s sales tax Web service with any e-commerce, third party or custom-built solution.
About Avalara:
Headquartered on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, Washington, Avalara is changing the sales and use tax landscape by delivering innovative and affordable solutions to small and medium businesses. Led by a team of industry experts in sales and use tax, and security and information technology, Avalara is focused on providing the easiest, most accurate and affordable way for businesses to address all their statutory sales and use tax requirements. Additional news and information are available at http://www.avalara.com
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For more information about Avalara, contact:
Andrea Anderson, andrea.anderson@avalara.com, 206.780.7008
