Avalara Provides Resource Following Marketplace Fairness Vote

New website aimed at helping SMBs demystify online sales tax provides answers to pressing questions.

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, WA - May 7, 2012 -  Avalara, the market leading provider of sales tax and compliance automation services in the cloud, today announced a new resource, www.salestaxchanges.com, aimed at helping small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) demystify online sales tax in a clear, straightforward manner. In addition to examining the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013, the site provides answers to pressing questions and offers practical tips for removing the burden of sales tax compliance.

“In 2004 we founded Avalara to make sales tax management as simple and painless as possible,” said Avalara Founder and CEO Scott McFarlane. “Since then we’ve grown to lead the field of sales tax automation, working behind the scenes with any financial, ecommerce, point of sale, or mobile platform to instantly deliver the correct tax decision on any transaction in any location. Now that the Marketplace Fairness Act has passed the Senate, we realize remote sellers will likely have questions, and – just as with all retailers – Avalara is here to help.”

Prior to Avalara, many SMBs had extensive sales tax compliance issues, but there wasn’t an affordable solution available that was simple to implement and maintain. As a result, most of those businesses managed sales tax manually – an inefficient, time consuming, and often inaccurate process. Avalara changed all of that by harnessing the power of the internet and the expertise of the best technologists and sales tax professionals in the business to automate compliance in real time, right within a client’s billing system. The end result was AvaTax – Avalara’s fast, easy, accurate, and affordable way to calculate and remit indirect taxes.

Today Avalara serves tens of thousands of customers worldwide. In 2013 it expects to deliver more than 2 billion tax calculation transactions in more than 85 countries, file and remit more than $10 billion in sales, use, and VAT tax collections, and manage more than 5 million exemption certificates for companies of all sizes.

All of this is done at a cost any business can afford. Avalara’s scalable pricing is based on transaction volume and starts at a few hundred dollars per year. Depending on the size and nature of their enterprise, most customers pay pennies per transaction.

“Since day one we believed the time was coming when businesses of all sizes would automate their indirect taxes, and we’ve built our company accordingly,” said McFarlane. “Outsourcing sales tax compliance is much like outsourcing payroll management. Most businesses leave compliance to the experts so they can focus on their primary expertise. In the process, they save time, money, and avoid risks associated with government audits,” he continued. “As more businesses continue to adopt our service worldwide every day, it becomes more clear that doing sales tax manually in today’s electronic world just doesn’t make sense.”

About Avalara

Founded in 2004, Avalara pioneered a service-based platform for sales tax and compliance automation and has been recognized for years as one of America’s fastest growing technology firms. The company’s cloud solutions help thousands of customers stay focused on their core businesses by providing automated end to end compliance services including sales and use tax calculation, exemption certificate management, filing and remittance, and a broad array of related services.

Avalara built its technology platform and extensive user base using internal expertise and the strategic acquisition of industry leading organizations, technologies, and personnel. Operating behind the scenes via seamless integration with virtually any business management system, Avalara delivers fast, easy, accurate, and affordable solutions for companies of any size.

On the international front, the company supports more than 85 countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim. It serves tens of thousands of registered users globally and calculates VAT, sales and use taxes on one billion transactions annually. The company employs more than 400 professionals at its headquarters on Bainbridge Island, WA and offices in Seattle WA; Irvine, San Diego and Rocklin, CA; Falls Church, VA; Raleigh, NC; Harrisburg, PA; and Pune, India.