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.
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
The Vitamin Shoppe
Reduce tax risk
Spreadsheets can lead to guesswork
Government requirements are increasingly complex and vast. Without automation, your business takes on unnecessary risk.
Automated tax software increases the accuracy of your tax compliance by storing the most-up-to date info in the cloud.
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 of the right locations.
We answer with such confidence and authority now; the auditors have moved on to someone else.
- Lois Browne, VP Finance
Dylan’s Candy Bar
We answer with such confidence and authority now; the auditors have moved on to someone else.
- Lois Browne, VP Finance
Dylan’s Candy Bar
Reduce tax risk
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.
Grow and scale without adding tax pain
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
Inovonics
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
Zillow
Get more out of your existing technology and systems
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.
Get more out of your existing technology and systems
Add tax compliance to your business systems
Chances are, you’re already automating critical parts of your business with ERPs, ecommerce platforms, and other business systems.Get more out of your investment by connecting tax software into the solutions that power other parts of your business.
Automated tax solutions like Avalara are integrated 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
Zillow
On average, companies with $10 million or more in revenue have six finance professionals who spend 25% of their time on sales and use tax compliance related tasks.
The Sales and Use Tax Knowledge Gap survey, 2017
Side-by-side comparison
Manual | Automated | |
REGISTRATION |
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CALCULATION |
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RETURNS & REPORTING |
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DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT |
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Cost of manual tax compliance calculator
See how automating with Avalara can help reduce the cost of tax compliance for your business
Use this calculator to estimate your current costs and potential tax liability.
Potential annual savings
Cost savings breakdown
The information provided by this calculation is intended to be a rough approximation only. The estimate may not reflect actual time and cost savings.
Next steps
Talk to us and we'll show you how you can automate your tax compliance — from calculation and returns to registration and document management — from a single dashboard.
You spend {{hoursspent}} hours/month manually managing tax compliance. See how you match up against industry peers, who spend between 100 and 650 hours a month. Get Aberdeen Group’s report on the manual cost of tax compliance.
Try our free Sales Tax Risk Assessment to determine the states where you might be obligated to register and collect sales tax.