What words do you think of when the topic of taxes comes up? Boring? Annoying? Necessary? Stressful? Whatever words you use to describe them, it’s important to get them correct in your online store. While e-commerce legislature is by and large still well behind the curve when it comes to relevant taxation, it’s something that you don’t want to have to revisit after you’ve paid your taxes for the year. I think we’d all have some other choice words in that case.
In many jurisdictions across the U.S. and even in many abroad, taxes can change quite frequently. Sometimes it can happen more than once a month, depending on where you live. However, you can always count on things to change year-to-year, if nothing else. States across the nation are struggling to keep up with growing needs. So you better believe that they’re going to continue to watch taxes more and more closely as the years pass. In fact, our friends at Avalara have dug into this topic for all of us in the past, shining a light on how online sales tax got to where we are today.
(FYI – That’s an actual screenshot above. We’re not trying to make any statements about taxes here.)
Taxes are not fun. They’re not. I’m nodding off just writing this article. (Not really - but you get the point.) Okay, maybe they are if you work at a tax preparation service. For the rest of us, we need some additional help when it comes to protecting our business. The last thing you want to do is have to cut more checks out to Uncle Sam to make up for missing tax changes.
How can you keep up with those changes though? Chances are, you’re not going to subscribe to the IRS’s blog to do that. (That sentence was even painful to read, huh?) Luckily for us all, Avalara picks up the difficult job of calculating, keeping track of, maintaining, and reporting taxes through their flagship product called AvaTax. We highly recommend it. One of the other things they do is keep us all updated with the exhaustingly boring tax news. They recently released a free whitepaper outlining the tax changes you need to know about in 2017, and we definitely think you should read it. You read that right… It’s free!
Take a look at the whitepaper and let us know what you think. What are your thoughts on the changes this year? Leave a comment below.