Repost from Avalara.com
Salt. Tea. Whiskey. Wine. Transportation. Sanitation. Consumption. Burdensome consumer taxation dates backs centuries, sparking riots, revolts and even two revolutionary wars. The “gabelle,” a tax on salt by the French monarchy is said to have led to the French Revolution and the Boston Tea Party, an uprising by America’s colonists against Britain’s Tea Act of 1773, was a catalyst to the American Revolution.
So it’s not without some irony that July 1 marks the date when many U.S. states put their newly increased sales tax rates into effect — the same month when both France and the U.S. celebrate their independence. While a few percentage points increase hardly merits waging an all-out war against sales tax, revolutionizing the way you manage tax compliance is a worthy cause.
U.S. states are still struggling to fill budget shortfalls — often hundreds of millions of dollars — and sales tax is often the soldier that falls on the sword. A number of states made bold moves in 2015. In Kansas, lawmakers voted in the largest tax increase in its state’s history, pushing its sales tax rate from 6.15 percent to 6.5 percent, making it one of the highest in the nation. In all, 19 states will raise sales tax rates effective July 1, 2015.
While seemingly straightforward, even a small change to a state or local tax rate can be a big deal when it comes to compliance. If you do business in multiple states or serve a broad base of customers, trying to keep up with these rates changes system can be a time-consuming and costly undertaking.
Free yourself from the worry and unpleasantness by automating sales tax in your billing, ERP or ecommerce system. Cloud-hosted tax decisioning software like Avalara AvaTax gives you real-time access to the latest rates and rules and pinpoint precision in applying those rates to every transaction. Much like the minutemen of the American Revolution, AvaTax is ready in a minute’s notice (less, actually), so you can declare victory on sales tax compliance.
Compare the benefits of a Cloud vs. On-Premise tax solution in this handy side-by-side comparison.
By, Avalara, www.avalara.com
