The next phase of tax and compliance: Moving from analysis to execution
Avalara Product Pulse: What’s new at Avalara
Avalara Product Pulse is our regular update on how we’re evolving tax and compliance to help businesses move faster, reduce complexity, and stay ahead of change.
Tax compliance used to be about staying informed. Reviewing reports, tracking obligations, and ensuring filings were accurate.
That’s no longer enough.
As businesses expand globally and regulations move toward real-time reporting, compliance has become continuous. Tax teams are expected to validate data, resolve issues, and stay compliant in near real time across multiple systems and jurisdictions.
The challenge is now execution.
Teams need to understand what’s happening and need to act quickly and with confidence.
In early 2026, Avalara introduced a series of updates across its platform designed to support this shift. Across reporting, validation, onboarding, and global compliance, these innovations help teams move from analysis to execution by embedding intelligence and automation directly into everyday workflows.
How Avalara is advancing agentic AI in tax and compliance
Along the tax and compliance life cycle, these updates are designed to automate key compliance tasks within existing workflows.
Turn tax data into action with AI-driven insights
Tax teams have more data than ever. But the challenge is knowing what requires attention and how to act on it quickly.
New capabilities across Avalara AvaTax and Avalara AvaTax for Accounts Payable bring analysis and action closer together:
- AI reporting — Avalara AvaTax
Analyzes transactional data to uncover trends, detect anomalies, and generate actionable insights across tax and financial reporting, including structured summaries and recommendations. Watch the demo. - AI tax summary — AvaTax for Accounts Payable
Provides clear, plain-language explanations for tax decisions, helping teams understand outcomes more quickly. Watch the demo. - Smart rule recommendations — AvaTax for Accounts Payable
Proactively suggests rule optimizations based on transaction patterns, supporting continuous improvement in accuracy and efficiency. Watch the demo.
Reduce manual validation and improve data quality
Exemption certificate validation remains one of the most time-consuming parts of compliance, especially when data is incomplete or inconsistent.
Updates in Avalara Exemption Certificate Management (ECM) simplify how teams validate and access data:
- AI-powered certificate validation
Automatically ingests, classifies, and validates exemption certificates for accuracy and completeness using intelligent document processing. Learn more. - Natural language search
Enables users to find customer and certificate data using everyday queries, with inputs translated into structured queries behind the scenes. Learn more.
Bring guidance directly into compliance workflows
Execution slows down when users have to leave their workflow to find answers or rely on support teams.
With Avi, our AI assistant, and related capabilities, guidance is embedded directly into the systems where work happens:
- Avi Chrome extension
Provides guided setup, contextual tax and compliance guidance, and real-time assistance across Shopify, WooCommerce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and QuickBooks Online, enabling users to manage setup and compliance without leaving their workflow. Learn more. - AI SuiteApp for NetSuite SuiteTax
Enables AI-assisted setup and configuration of subsidiaries, product categories, tax rules, and items, while integrating Avi directly into NetSuite workflows to provide real-time, contextual guidance on tax calculations. Learn more. - Avi for Tax Research is now inside the Avalara Portal
Access citation-backed tax answers directly within the Avalara Portal using Avi for Tax Research. Ask taxability questions and receive verified, real-time responses sourced from Avalara Tax Research without leaving your workflow. Learn more. - Local tax research for services library — Avalara Tax Research
Surfaces jurisdiction-level guidance within the workflow, including one-click access to local variations beyond state-level rules. Learn more.
Automate financial workflows and operational processes
Beyond analysis and validation, Avalara continues to expand automation across financial workflows tied to compliance.
- Toast Checking integration — Sales Tax Smart Jar powered by DAVO
Automatically sets aside sales tax each day using Toast transaction data and prepares funds for filing and payment, aligning daily fund set-aside with filing and remittance activities. - Royalty and fee collection for franchises — DAVO
Enables collection and reconciliation of franchise royalties and fees using a structured, multitenant model, with payments managed through the same infrastructure used for sales tax set-aside and filing.
Additional platform enhancements
In addition to the key innovations above, Avalara continues to invest in improving everyday compliance workflows across integrations, onboarding, reporting, and platform performance.
| Capability | What’s new |
|---|---|
| Shopify enhancements | Manage tax reporting across multiple entities and improve accuracy for multishipment orders within a single Shopify store with multientity routing and partial fulfillment capabilities. |
| Avalara marketplace tax reporting for Shopify | Automate the import of supported marketplace transactions from Shopify into Avalara for tax returns filing, simplifying marketplace tax reporting workflows. |
| Adobe Commerce diagnostics | Identify and resolve tax calculation and configuration issues faster with AI-integrated, in-workflow troubleshooting through the diagnostics suite. |
| Stripe document workflows | Retrieve completed, UBL-compliant invoice documents and validate trading partners using NDI through the Avalara E-Invoicing and Live Reporting configuration page, simplifying document management and onboarding workflows. |
| Avalara AvaTax for Accounts Payable (AI enhancements) | Optimize tax accuracy with AI-powered smart rule recommendations and understand tax decisions with plain-language explanations through AI tax summary. |
| AI-first onboarding | Simplify setup with AI-assisted onboarding across Shopify, WooCommerce, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, including transaction uploads and nexus recommendations using business license data. |
| Avalara AvaTax (VAT determination) country coverage expansion | Get support for VAT determination in China, Paraguay, and Costa Rica, enabling accurate tax calculation in additional LATAM and APAC markets. See VAT determination coverage. Learn how. |
| Avalara Managed VAT Reporting onboarding | Accelerate time to go-live with guided onboarding and filing workflows through the new Tour Guide feature, helping users complete setup faster, drive adoption, and reduce reliance on manual support. Learn how. |
| Avalara VAT Reporting (expansion and enhancements) | Access expanded VAT Reporting coverage for Chile and Colombia, with improved visibility and AI-powered assistance through Avi to help teams manage VAT compliance more efficiently. Learn how. |
| Streamlined Sales Tax onboarding | Complete SST registration within the Faster, Easier Go Live onboarding flow, reducing manual coordination during setup. |
| Avalara Capital integration — NetSuite | Integrate Avalara Capital with NetSuite to provide access to a working capital solution based on accounts receivable data, enabling businesses to fund tax liabilities and manage cash flow within existing financial workflows. |
| Platform performance and security | Improve reporting speed and scalability while meeting enterprise security requirements through ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certification. |
From insight to execution
These latest updates reflect a broader shift in how tax and compliance work gets done. As compliance becomes more continuous and complex, the ability to act quickly and accurately is becoming just as important as understanding what’s happening.
Our continued investment is focused on reducing the operational burden of compliance while increasing speed, accuracy, and confidence.
Our goal is simple: Help teams spend less time managing compliance and more time moving their business forward.
Avalara Tax Changes 2026 is here
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