Avalara is a comprehensive solution, handling all of fuboTV's needs and providing an expandable platform as more states add taxes for streaming services. Avalara AvaTax for Communications helps fuboTV more accurately calculate the morass of taxes, fees, and surcharges, while Avalara Returns for Communications helps make sure that fuboTV’s lodgments are timely — to the tune of about 1,000 returns per year.
What Larry appreciates most about Avalara is the worry-free compliance, which he doesn’t reckon fuboTV could have achieved internally.
“Avalara does all the hard work for us,” he says. “We would have had to staff up pretty significantly and look for people with that specific expertise. Secondly, we would've needed some access to a database telling us the rates and lodging frequencies. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how much that would have cost, nor would I be able to tell you how long it would have taken to build that up from scratch. It would have been a massive undertaking.”
Because he doesn’t have to handle tax calculation and lodgment, Larry is free to focus on bigger priorities for the publicly traded company.
“The SEC has designated us as an accelerated filer,” he explains, “which means that we only have 60 days after the end of every year to lodge our annual report. Whereas before we had 90 days, and that extra 30 days made a huge difference. If I had to worry about sales tax compliance and managing that effort, I'm not sure I'd be able to get through the annual audit and the annual lodging. Avalara has freed up my time to focus on things like that.”
