Why automate tax compliance?

The better question is: Why burden your business with something so complex and tedious when it can be solved with software in the cloud?

Decrease the high cost and drain on your business

Employee time and expertise are expensive

Without automation, your tax professionals are probably buried in endless tasks that could be offloaded. Every hour spent on tax management is an hour lost on other (more important) parts of your business.

Calculate your cost

It would take me three days to research and categorize just 100 items. Can you imagine how long it would take me to do more than 20,000?

 – Diana Rancy, Sales Tax Manager
Read The Vitamin Shoppe story

Benefits of compliance automation

Spreadsheets can lead to guesswork 

Government requirements are increasingly complex and vast, as rates, product taxability rules, and tax laws are constantly in flux. Without automation, your business is likely taking on unnecessary risk.

With up-to-date rates and rules maintained by a cloud-based tax engine, automated tax software can increase the accuracy of your tax compliance. 

With automation, rate calculations are more accurate, use tax is assessed, returns are filed on time, exemption certificates are up to date and easily accessible, and you’re registered in all the right locations.

"We answer with such confidence and authority now; the auditors have moved on to someone else." 

- Lois Browne, VP Finance
Read Dylan’s story

Expand your business, not your tax department 

Company growth can create more tax pain. Entering new markets and adding sales channels, employees, products, and/or services can trigger new obligations to register and file in more locations.  

So, too, does expanding into international markets. With global sales come more complicated tax rules and an additional set of tax jurisdictions. Value-added tax (VAT) and goods and services tax (GST) are applied differently than U.S. sales tax. And every country’s tax rules are different.

Automation decreases the tax complexity that often comes with business grow. The effort required to maintain compliance in a few states is vastly different when you do business in most of the U.S. And selling into more countries adds a whole new level of complexity. With automation, it’s easier to scale.

"I don’t worry about sales tax at all now. If we turn on 15 more states tomorrow, we wouldn’t have to worry about a single thing."

- Andrea Riviezzo, Controller 
Read the Inovonics story

Add tax compliance to your business applications 

You’re likely already automating critical parts of your operations with ERPs, ecommerce platforms, and other business applications. Get more out of your investments by connecting tax software into the systems that power other parts of your business.

Automated tax solutions like Avalara integrate into the most widely used solutions or offer an open API, which allows you to manage your tax compliance within a single dashboard.

"We just publicly announced another pending acquisition, and the ability to take in a new revenue stream, port it into Zuora, and immediately be compliant — that scalability is really nice." 

– Jason Heckel, Senior Director of Tax 
Read Zillow's story

Side-by-side comparison

  Manual Automated
REGISTRATION
  • Research tax laws and obligations (nexus laws)
  • Register with individual tax authorities
  • Remit registration fees
  • Re-register when select registrations expire
  • Fill out one form for multiple registrations
  • Provide information for a licensing program (once)
  • Remit fees or make changes when alerted by software
CALCULATIONS
  • Visit Department of Revenue websites frequently to track tax rate and taxability rule changes
  • Upload rate tables
  • Set up jurisdictions and tax codes
  • Assign rates
  • Build tax schedules
  • Manage tax notices
  • Make system updates every time a rate, rule, product code, or tax law changes
  • Calculate tax rates with rooftop accuracy in real time for all U.S. jurisdictions (13,000+)
  • Instantly and automatically account for and apply changes to taxability rates and rules
  • Verify SKU-level tax rules for millions of product and service universal product codes (UPC) and thousands of tax code categories.
  • Automatically track and account for sales tax holidays and other exemptions
RETURNS & REPORTING
  • Determine filing schedules and deadlines for all appropriate tax jurisdictions
  • Find, download and fill out the correct forms
  • Report and remit the right amount of sales tax owed for each jurisdiction in which you have an obligation to collect has been established
  • Keep track of filing dates and deadlines for tax remittance and returns
  • Mail or e-file returns on time to avoid late fees or penalties
  • Export tax data instantly with auto-populated forms for faster, easier remittance and filing
  • Track filing dates and deadlines for on-time payments and filings for every jurisdiction
  • Streamline payments to multiple taxing authorities
  • Digitally archive and store records for easy retrieval or audit access 
COMPLIANCE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
  • Physically store hard copies for every tax exempt customer
  • Validate documents at point of sale
  • Manually retrieve documents as requested by auditors
  • Monitor certificate expirations and request updated documents as needed
  • Upload exemption certificates into cloud software
  • Access current certificates digitally at the point of sale
  • Direct auditors to customized dashboards for document retrieval

How much can you save with sales tax compliance automation?

Find out in real time how much you could save automating with Avalara.
STEP 1 OF 5

Registration obligations

Potential annual savings
{totalsavings}
Registration savings
{registrationsavings}

Step 2: Tax rates and rules

  • Researching changes in state sales tax laws
  • Checking economic nexus thresholds (registration requirements triggered by sales volume into a state)
  • Mapping sales activity to state requirements

Step 2: Tax rates and rules

STEP 2 OF 5

Tax rates and rules

Potential annual savings
{totalsavings}
Tax rates savings
{taxratessavings}

Step 1: Registration obligations

Step 3: Sales tax returns

  • Studying product taxability for multiple jurisdictions
  • Updating rate tables
  • Fixing tax-related errors

Per the Aberdeen Group report

  • Small and midsize companies (annual revenue of $50M–$1B) typically spend 29 hours per month
  • Large companies (annual revenue of $1B+) typically spend 143 hours per month

 

Step 1: Registration obligations

Step 3: Sales tax returns

STEP 3 OF 5

Sales tax returns

Potential annual savings
{totalsavings}
Returns savings
{taxreturnssavings}

Step 2: Tax rates and rules

Step 4: Exemption certificates

  • Researching tax forms and filing requirements
  • Reconciling sales data and reporting
  • Filling out state forms and remitting taxes
  • Amending tax returns and notice management

Per the Aberdeen Group report

 

  • Small and mid-size companies (annual revenue of $50M-$1B) typically spend 35 hours per month
  • Large companies (annual revenue of $1B+) typically spend 175 hours per month

 

Step 2: Tax rates and rules

Step 4: Exemption certificates

STEP 4 OF 5

Exemption certificates

Potential annual savings
{totalsavings}
Exemption savings
{exemptionssavings}

Step 3: Sales tax returns

Step 5: Potential tax liability

  • Collecting, reviewing, and validating new certificates
  • Renewing expired certificates and updating customer records 
  • Addressing errors, complaints, credits, and rebilling

Per the Aberdeen Group report

  • Small and midsize companies (annual revenue of $50M-$1B) typically spend 11 hours per month
  • Large companies (annual revenue of $1B+) typically spend 67 hours per month

Step 3: Sales tax returns

Step 5: Potential tax liability

STEP 5 OF 5

Potential tax liability

Potential annual savings
{totalsavings}
Tax liability
{revenuesavings}

Step 4: Exemption certificates

Does your business have sales in states where it isn’t registered for sales tax? Estimate the total annual sales revenue here.

We apply an average sales tax rate of 8% to your total annual sales in states where you are not registered for sales tax, and then add a 15% penalty on top. The total is your potential annual tax liability.

 

(Y x .08) + ((Y x .08)(0.15)) = Z

Step 4: Exemption certificates

Total potential annual savings: {totalsavings} Savings breakdown

How can I take advantage of these savings?

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Potential annual savings
{totalsavings}
Manual labor savings
{laborsavings}
Potential tax liability
{revenuesavings}

Step 5: Potential tax liability

Based on $55/hour per the Aberdeen Group report1

Calculated liability is based on an average sales tax rate of 8% plus a 15% penalty

How can I take advantage of these savings?

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Step 5: Potential tax liability

The information provided by this calculator is intended to be a rough approximation only. The estimate shown here may not reflect actual time and cost savings.

Discover what you need to know about tax compliance

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Understand the cost of tax compliance

Read what the research from NetReflector/Potentiate says about how much companies spend on manual tax compliance.
Learn where to file

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