Like the recent hit romantic comedy movie starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, when it comes to what may be every organizations least favorite activities, sales tax and use tax compliance, “It’s Complicated.” 

Let’s face it, regardless of the size of your business the burden of accurately calculating, collecting, and remitting transactional taxes is a challenge—and not just because historically managing these tasks has involved cumbersome and inaccurate manual processes or expensive enterprise hardware and software systems. It is also a challenge because of a host of mandates regarding compliance.  In short, governments not only expect but demand you get these calculations and payments right and that there is an accurate record for auditing purposes.

Realities are that thanks to cloud-based software platforms designed specifically for handling the complexities of sales and use tax compliance, companies can now outsource these tasks to a trusted third-party.

One such company that has been a leading innovator in Software as a Service (SaaS (News - Alert)) solutions for the sales tax and other transactions is Alavara. Its end-to-end suite of sales and other transactional tax compliance solutions encompass deep stores of statutory tax content, enabling businesses to automate the compliance process, thus reducing errors and audit exposure, increasing the speed of transaction processing, and reducing total compliance costs. Capabilities offered include:

Tax Rate Calculation:  Avalara Ava instantaneously and accurately calculates tax in more than 10,000 taxing jurisdictions.

Exemption Certificate Management: Avalara CertCapture creates, validates and stores sales tax exemption certificated and reseller certificates in the cloud.

Filing and Returns: Avalara Returns automates the entire sales tax filing process

The company has a nice sense of humor about being in a business process optimization space that is less than scintillating. That said, you have to like their motto: “Sales tax is hard. We make it easy.”

How they make it simple will be the subject of an insightful webinar, “Sales and Use Tax Compliance –For Dummies, to be held Wednesday August 20, 2015, at 1:00pm ET/ 10:00am PT. You are invited to join myself and Scott Newell, Sales Tax Technology Expert, Avalara as we delve into:

• Critical questions to ask whether or not you have nexus. For those not familiar with the term this is about whether there is sufficient physical presence for determining whether an out-of-state business selling products into a state is liable for collecting sales or use tax on sales into the state. Nexus is required before a taxing jurisdiction can impose its taxes on an entity.
• The Big difference between sales tax and use tax
• The benefits of e-filing and sales tax prepayments
• Tips for avoiding a (costly) sales tax audit

As an incentive to registrants, not only will you have the opportunity to hear Scott’s presentation and ask questions, but you will also receive a copy of the book, Sales & Use Tax Compliance for Dummies.

For anyone grappling with the complexities of being in compliance this is a must have as a reference guide. Despite the title of the webinar and the book, both are seriously aimed at making you proficient when it comes to things like knowing what you really must know about nexus, and how to better manage those all important reseller certificates. 

Automation and the cloud can be your path to both peace of mind and more efficient operations when it comes to those tasks that are complicated business necessities where time and money can be better spent.