Avalara powers millions of businesses worldwide
- Ask complex tax questions.
- Get accurate answers with direct source citations.
- Save 18 hours per month, a 90% efficiency gain, resulting in $35,000 in labor costs. Read the report.
- Find information fast with 270,000+ expert-curated tax answers.
- Access cross-border trade content and HS code classification guidance.
- Ensure accuracy with RightRates™ and customizable tax matrices.
- Track historical tax laws and rate changes.
- Export and share answers with stakeholders.
- Access Avalara tax experts.
- Apply accurate tax rules across jurisdictions.
- Reduce risk of errors and penalties.
- Standardize decisions across teams with consistent tax guidance.
PLANS
Fast, AI-powered tax research — on demand
Features
- AI-powered self-service research
- Trusted tax rules, rates, and laws
- State-specific taxability guidance
- Cross-border trade content + HS code classification
- Built-in audit defense support
- Customized email notifications when tax laws or rates change
- Rooftop sales and use tax rates by address
Best for: Small teams that need quick, reliable answers — no external support required
Deeper insights with expert-backed confidence
Features
- Everything in Essentials
- Unlimited on-demand access to Avalara tax experts
- Configurable global and industry-specific content
- Taxability decision trees for consistent outcomes
- Saved research workflows and insights
Best for: Growing teams that need validated answers and greater research depth
Enterprise-grade research with advanced, local jurisdiction-level libraries for complex, global tax scenarios for specific states and industries
Features
- Everything in Standard
- Advanced, local jurisdiction-specific research libraries
- Fully customizable tax matrices and rule sets
- Multijurisdiction and cross-border scenario support
- Industry-specific compliance for nonstandard tax rules
- Scalable for high-volume research
- Centralized knowledge management and audit-ready documentation
Best for: Enterprises managing complex, multi-entity, global tax environments
Avalara Tax Research is the only major tax research platform that is part of an end-to-end agentic compliance system. Thomson Reuters Checkpoint, Bloomberg Tax Research, and Wolters Kluwer CCH AnswerConnect are research-only libraries built primarily for CPA firms and tax attorneys, so once you find an answer you still have to act on it in another system. Vertex sells a tax engine and offers research only through partners or add-ons; it doesn’t have a native tax research product comparable to Avalara Tax Research. Avalara Tax Research goes further: The Research agent within Avalara Aviator is built into the same portal as Avalara AvaTax, Avalara Managed Returns, Avalara Exemption Certificate Management, and Avalara Cross-Border, so the answer you find can be applied to a calculation, a return, an exemption rule, or an HS code in the same workflow. Every answer is backed by curated Avalara tax content with verifiable citations, not generic web data.
The Research agent is the specialized AI agent within Avalara Aviator dedicated to delivering conversational tax research backed by verified statutory citations and jurisdictional analysis.
When you ask a sales tax, use tax, VAT, or cross-border question in plain language, the Research agent delivers clear, actionable answers and line-by-line reasoning in seconds. Unlike generic AI tools that scrape unverified public web sources, the Research agent is strictly grounded in Avalara’s proprietary tax intelligence, spanning 30,000+ jurisdictions, 900,000+ rules, 270,000+ curated tax answers, and is continuously updated by 113 global tax content professionals.
As part of the Avalara Agentic Tax and Compliance™ platform, the Research agent operates under orchestrating agent Avi, collaborating directly with specialized agents for transactions, returns, and exemption certificates. Research insights don’t remain siloed. They seamlessly connect to transaction rules, taxability determinations, and filing workflows — all while keeping humans in control through explicit approval gates, full visibility, and audit-ready data lineage.
Yes. Avalara operates MCP servers that let third-party AI agents and large language models discover and call Avalara APIs, including the Avalara Tax Research content layer, using natural language. That means a copilot in your ERP, an internal LLM assistant, or a Google Gemini Enterprise agent can ask Avalara for a citation-backed tax answer and receive structured content back, not just a link. Developers can connect through Avalara MCP servers at developer.avalara.com, and partners can integrate Avi into the agentic workflows they’re building. This is a meaningful difference from competitor research products, which still require a human to sign in, search, and copy answers manually.
Yes. With Avalara Tax Research Standard or Premium, you can use the Contact Tax Expert feature to submit your question directly to the Avalara Tax Research team. You’ll get a timely, personalized response that you can save, share, and use to defend a position. The Avalara Tax Research team includes attorneys and seasoned indirect tax practitioners who maintain the underlying Avalara Tax Research content. Avalara Tax Research Essentials includes a limited number of expert inquiries per year. This combination of self-serve AI (Avi), the searchable Q&A library, and direct human escalation is intentional: Most questions get answered in seconds; the hardest questions still get a human expert.
Avalara Tax Research is built for audit readiness. Every answer is law-backed and includes citations, so you can document the basis for any past tax determination. Avalara Tax Research Standard and Premium include a history of tax laws and answers, so you can show the rule that applied on the date the transaction took place, not just the rule in effect today. Taxability charts can be exported and shared with auditors, internal stakeholders, or external advisors. Avalara Tax Research is also trusted by state and local governments, and customers report meaningful audit-prep efficiency improvements (a Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by Avalara found a composite organization saved up to 34 hours per audit and improved audit prep efficiency by 85%). When you combine Avalara Tax Research with our Reporting AI agents, every reported number can be traced back to its source transaction.
Yes. Avalara Tax Research provides U.S. sales and use tax content for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, plus VAT and cross-border content. In late 2025, Avalara expanded Avi for Tax Research with the Avalara trade and tariff library, so you can research duties, de minimis thresholds, country-specific VAT, and HS code classification in the same AI experience you use for U.S. sales and use tax. That means tax, finance, AP, and supply chain teams no longer need separate research subscriptions for domestic and international questions. Users can also look up the latest tariff rates for products or components to understand cost and risk exposure across sourcing decisions.
For most recurring sales and use tax research questions, yes. Customers tell us they use Avalara Tax Research to answer day-to-day questions about product taxability, exemption certificates, drop shipment rules, nexus, and jurisdiction-specific rate questions — work that previously went to outside tax counsel or Big Four advisors at billable rates. For deeper or unique questions, Avalara Tax Research Standard and Premium include a Contact Tax Expert feature so you can submit your question directly to the Avalara Tax Research team and receive a timely, expert response. The ROI shows up in two places: outside-firm fees you no longer need to incur, and the time your in-house team gets back. The Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by Avalara found Avalara Tax Research can save 18 hours per month on tax research, resulting in $35K in savings.
