Today we want to show you just how easy it is to get started using Avalara to manage sales tax compliance within Magento. With this powerful combination, you can manage tax calculation on your website, VAT and GST compliance, customer exemptions, and the filing and remittance of sales tax returns. So let's take a look.

I will start by entering an order on my website. When I proceed to checkout, I will enter my personal information and Avalara will calculate tax. In addition, Avalara will validate the address and provide a suggested standardized postal service address. A validated address ensures accurate calculation of sales tax based on the specific address as opposed to a broad and often inaccurate zip code calculation. And there's no doubt that an accurate address improves product shipment deliverability. Now I'll place my order.

Now let's talk about the taxability of products and services. The way Avalara manages ever-changing tax rules is through an association made right inside the Magento admin dashboard. When you set up AvaTax you'll map your products and services to a tax class. A tax class is associated with an Avalara tax code. Clothing and many other goods and services — for example freight, software, and food — are taxable in some states and non-taxable in others. So product and service taxability is an incredibly important part of the tax compliance process.

You may remember that when I created my order, clothing was the type of product I sold. Here I am mapping the item to the clothing tax class. One of the key benefits of Avalara's cloud-based solution is that taxability rules are continually updated within AvaTax so there's nothing for you to maintain. You're always going to be up to date.

Now let's say that my customer claims to be tax-exempt. Avalara CertCapture provides a full exemption management solution where you can collect, store, and manage your customer's exemption certificates. For orders that are placed by your returning customers, you can also exempt customers from sales tax when they place an order in Magento.

For many of our customers, perhaps what they love most about Avalara is that we can file and remit taxes on their behalf. Our fully-managed returns service reduces exposure to late filing and other penalties. And if a state sends a notice about a question on a return, Avalara will manage that process as well.

The bottom line is you probably have better things to do than managing the intricacies of sales tax compliance — instead, leave it to Avalara where tax compliance is done right.