Key Takeaways   

• Organizations selling goods and services across the U.S. are subject to complex "economic nexus" compliance requirements that can vary from state to state.
• Changing legislation makes accurate and real-time indirect tax calculation and compliance difficult, not only in the U.S. but also internationally. Avalara is expanding its tax management solutions globally to help organizations address the challenges of standardizing and automating indirect tax processes.  
• The Avalara AvaTax solution, available in the SAP Store, integrates with core SAP ERP, SAP Ariba, and SAP Commerce Cloud to enable automation of tax calculations, e-filings, and payments, among other tax management functions.  

Legislative Mandates Drive Need for Global Tax Management Automation 

U.S. Economic Nexus Compliance Adds Complexity To Product/Service Taxability  

Challenges of Indirect Tax Function Automation  

Avalara International Expansion Helps SAP Customers Streamline Indirect Tax Function Across Regions  

What This Means for SAPinsiders 

• Evaluate your need for more granular content to enable more accurate indirect tax calculation. Trust in the data is a key requirement for the SAPinsider tax community regarding an organization's approach to digital tax strategy. For the indirect tax function, granular content that provides timely updates across tax jurisdiction, tax rate, and product/service taxability is an increasing priority. Organizations considering business models that will accelerate cross-border financial transactions should align business activity with content update requirements.  
• Engage key partners to help modernize indirect tax processes. SAPinsiders view global tax management automation as an important priority but remain challenged by the difficulty in standardizing and automating tax determination, calculation, and compliance processes. The indirect tax function represents one of the most challenging areas to automate for SAPinsiders. Leveraging experts and partners who have a deep understanding of indirect tax processes can be critical to the success of tax automation investments.  
• Understand product/service requirements and how they may impact your organization's tax exposure. Not only are indirect tax rates frequently changing across thousands of tax jurisdictions globally, but revenue authorities and regulators have also invested in more robust tax controls to support enhanced revenue collection. Organizations need to be proactive and future-proof their indirect tax function with automation and timely content updates to keep pace with regulatory updates, such as first-time-right mandates. Consider investing in global tax management solutions and integrations to support more accurate product/service taxability determination for clear visibility of potential tax liabilities.