Avalara.Avalara, a specialist in on-demand automated tax services to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), has been chosen to operate as a Certified Service Provider for the Streamlined Sales Tax sales tax, levy on the sale of goods or services, generally calculated as a percentage of the selling price, and sometimes called a purchase tax. It is usually collected in the form of an extra charge by the retailer, who remits the tax to the government. (SST SST: see airplane. ) initiative that recently had 19 states signed up as members. The Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based firm, which uses a "software as a service" model (see article on page 50) is playing up the certification as "a critical addition to the benefits of sales tax automation" it provides to customers. Two other firms, Taxware and CCH CCH Colegio de Ciencias y Humanidades (Spanish) CCH Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist CCH Cook County Hospital CCH Certified in Classical Homeopathy CCH Country Club Hills (Fairfax City, VA, USA) , have been chosen as CSPs for larger organizations. The SST project is a massive, long-term effort to address state claims on cross-jurisdictional sales, particularly those that are Internet- or catalog-based. Jared Vogt, Avalara's chairman and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. , notes that tax collection in the U.S. is immensely complicated, with more than 7,500 different jurisdictions. But the market is also huge, with some $180 billion in sales taxes collected in 2005. Avalara's flagship product line, AvaTax[TM], links Avalara's centrally maintained sales tax engine to the user's accounting package or e-commerce system via the Internet, so there's no change to the user's existing work-flow. AvaTax supports Quick-Books[R], Microsoft Dynamics[TM] GP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Microsoft Dynamics NAV is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software product from Microsoft. The product is part of the Microsoft Dynamics family, and intended to assist with finance, manufacturing, customer relationship management, supply chains, analytics and electronic , Epicor's iScala, Sage MAS 90/200 ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) An integrated information system that serves all departments within an enterprise. Evolving out of the manufacturing industry, ERP implies the use of packaged software rather than proprietary software written by or for one customer. , Sage MAS 500 ERP, and Sage Accpac ERP. Vogt says that Avalara's pricing approach is based primarily on the software the customer uses for its accounting. The basic rate for Great Plains users, for instance, is $99 a month, but is just $9.99 a month for presumably pre·sum·a·ble adj. That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. smaller QuickBooks users, Additional pricing variables are tied to volume. He says the firm has grown from 100 users in January 2005 to 5,000 this past June, with 450 resellers. Companies that enroll through the SST program, which is administered by the states, don't pay Avalara directly, however. Instead, Avalara collects a portion of the revenue from each sales transaction; in effect, Vogt says, the states aren't collecting the full tax but allocating a sort of commission to Avalara. Web: www.avalara.com |
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