When Blanche Savary de Beauregard - Head of M&A, Tax and Customs - joined Ledger in 2018, she immediately realised that its ambitious growth plans meant she would need support. With a team of just one, keeping up with the increasingly complex tax requirements in so many different jurisdictions would be unmanageable.
That year, the Wayfair ruling came into force in the US, which meant Ledger needed to register in several states and abide by each one’s unique rules and regulations. Blanche knew that dealing with VAT registration and reporting across Europe was relatively straightforward compared with the US system, a myriad of more than 14,000 constantly fluctuating tax jurisdictions.
She says, “Although European countries are not completely aligned, there are at least similarities between countries. The US has definitely been the most challenging market. Because we use Amazon for some of our fulfilment, local inventory held by Amazon meant we needed to register in places we hadn’t realised. It would have been completely nightmarish to try to manage this without Avalara.”
Avalara was chosen to provide Ledger with a complete compliance solution, which includes managing registration and reporting for VAT and sales tax globally. Ledger currently files tax returns across the EU, in all 50 US states, and in Japan and Australia. Partnership with Avalara has allowed a relatively small tax team to meet the compliance requirements created by the rapid growth of global sales.
Blanche says: “This couldn’t have been done without Avalara. Its automation and expertise saves a huge amount of time and money compared with having to find lawyers and local representatives to complete VAT registrations in all our jurisdictions.”
