A New Era for Enterprise Tax Compliance: Solving Global Tax Complexity Together – Avalara and SAP

Enterprise businesses today must adapt quickly to stay competitive. They’re launching new solutions to market, globalizing, entering new markets, merging and acquiring other organizations, and even restructuring. This improves their chances of staying ahead of forces beyond their control and remaining relevant to the customers they serve.

The tax landscape is no different. Competitive may be too bold a word, rather “pertinent,” is more appropriate. Shifting regulatory frameworks, cross-boarder tariffs, economic volatility, and geopolitical uncertainty create consistent change and complexity. Taxes are pertinent to all these changes, they have an impact on Sales & Use Tax, VAT, GST and cross-border transactions. Multinational businesses must stay ahead of these changes.

The pace of business transformation while it compounds complexity also offers opportunities to reinvent outdated processes. Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and real-time analytics are driving better ways for CFOs, tax professionals, and other business leaders to drive the needed operating improvements to quickly adapt and scale to compete. AI is powering:

• Better ways to scan and interpret volumes of tax code, regulations, and case law.
• Automated classification of invoices, receipts, and contracts.
• Expense classification, including the application of country-specific VAT rules.
• Real-time compliance needed to turn high volumes of global transactions.

These are just a few examples. The pace of change in compliance requirements is something legacy systems and manual processes can’t keep up with.

Internally, digital fluency is becoming paramount. Many tax departments are grappling with how to build departments that can meet the strategic demands of a new era for tax. Skills gaps persist. Without the tools and resources to drive digital transformation, what will result is finance and tax processes built from “old” ways of thinking.

CFOs and tax professionals will always need to ensure the timeliness and accuracy of tax filings. They’ll continue to be driven by boards and stockholders to minimize audit risk, fines, and penalties. If anything, expectations for meeting these metrics will rise even higher. This is the very reason there has never been a better time to modernize tax.

Together, SAP and Avalara offer a modern and integrated approach to meeting the complex and strategic demands of enterprise tax. Avalara AvaTax for SAP is an SAP Endorsed App, built on SAP BTP for SAP Cloud ERP (SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud) and is designed to meet enterprise tax needs. The integration automates tax determination and calculation to ensure the accuracy of tax rates across millions of products and12,000+ U.S. jurisdictions.

Building upon SAP’s clean core strategy endorsed SAP integrations include – SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business One, SAP ERP, SAP ECC, and SAP S/4HANA (Private Cloud). The integration:

• Automatically applies accurate tax rates across millions of products and jurisdictions.
• Allows for seamless automation of indirect tax compliance, reducing manual processes and errors.
• Makes transaction histories anytime, which is crucial for audit readiness and compliance.

The endorsed integration integrates seamlessly with Avalara Returns which uses transaction data from AvaTax to file U.S. returns automatically. In addition, Avalara CertCapture an SAP certified App, uses one-click within SAP ERP to automate the collection, validation and storage of exemption certificates.

What this Means for SAPinsiders

• Sales tax automation heightens accuracy and simplifies the complexity of managing tax rates in multiple jurisdictions.
• Transaction history ensures an “audit ready” team, anytime.