TaxOps embraces sales tax automation

From its base in Colorado, Judy Vorndran of TaxOps has built a thriving state and local tax (SALT) specialty business consulting practice serving companies across the U.S. and beyond.

While all of the firm’s clients have capable finance departments, few have the specific expertise needed to ensure the tax compliance, minimization, and planning  essential to growth-oriented businesses.

TaxOps balances strategic thinking and tactical advice in its SALT practice to foster closer relationships with clients. Judy and her team pride themselves on their deep knowledge of nexus and taxability studies, apportionment analysis, audit assistance, and sales tax automation.

SALT compliance has always been a source of potential risk for just about every business, but the 2018 United States Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. raised the stakes. “Businesses are the government’s invoicing system,” says Judy. “Tax calculation needs to be done with fidelity and integrity or somebody gets in trouble. After Wayfair, nobody knows how to easily identify what their liabilities are.”

There are as many state tax collection systems as there are states, and each one has its own idiosyncrasies. Compliance requirements are changing all the time, and tracking them across multiple states can be overwhelming.

Judy and her TaxOps team are vigorous proponents of sales tax automation for their clients. “It’s problematic to have to know all that,” Judy explains. “For example, Colorado has a combination of close to 900 statutory cities and counties for sales tax collection. If you were to select all of them, you’d be wrong. There’s a lot of minutiae — different kinds of licenses based on the flow of transactions that many clients don’t understand. We help them make the right selections for their nexus within Avalara.”

A major selling point for Judy is Avalara’s 1,400+ signed partner integrations for ERP, accounting, and other business systems. Judy usually recommends clients implement Avalara AvaTax, Avalara CertCapture, and Avalara Returns. TaxOps then helps clients manage the suite through secure access to Avalara.

In addition to the obvious risk mitigation benefit, Judy estimates that getting her clients automated with Avalara saves them at least a day in processing time for each jurisdiction. “I remember doing a bid for a multinational restaurant chain with 76 entities,” she recalls. “They had several people working around the clock for three weeks every month to file their sales tax returns.”