Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Discusses sales tax issues, especially compliance with tax laws, and how it affects Miva Merchant retailers. Includes demo of AccurateTax's TaxTools software for Miva Merchant.
Sales Tax Compliance and Your Miva Merchant Store
Presented By: Rick Wilsonand Peter Petracco Date: June 17, 2010
• Sales and Use Tax Primer – Sales Tax 101– What are storeowners faced with?– What’s coming in the future?
• What is AccurateTax TaxTools? – How did the solution come about? – What is our experience in this area? – Software as a Service
• Demo • Q/A
Introduction / Agenda
Sales Tax 101: A Primer
Nexus – physical location where storeowner is expected to collect and remit sales/use tax for sales that are accomplished on their behalf
Sourcing Rules – each state defines how products/services sold will be “sourced”, meaning how the seller should resolve the issue of sales tax calculations
• Origin-based vs. Destination-based vs. Combination-based
Sales vs. Use Tax• sales tax – traditionally the tax collected by a retailer/seller• use tax – tax supposed to be paid by the customer/purchaser if the seller did not collect
Sales Tax 101: Taxing Authorities/Jurisdictions
•Over 14,000 taxing authorities in the US today
•Most states have state/county jurisdictions, but some states have more breakdowns – city, metro or special jurisdiction taxes (stadium districts, transportation, etc.)
•Lack of uniformity across states for Rules sourcing, rounding, product taxability,
exemptions/filing/remittance
•Sales Tax Holidays and Item Exclusions – does your state have them, are you setup to deal with them?
•Insufficient state budgets are causing taxing authorities to get more “anxious” about tracking down sales tax delinquencies
•Zip-based Tax Solutions aren’t able to provide accurate sales tax rates
That’s today, what’s coming in the future?
Sales Tax 101: What are states doing?Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP)
• Group of aligned states (23) that have set down a set of rules and guidelines for the orderly calculation, reporting and remittance of taxes collected by Sellers in their states.
• 41 States + DC have accepted the SSTP concept, but are considered “advisory non-conforming members”
• Sellers can use Certified Service Providers (CSP) to avoid the “audit” issue • Volunteer Sellers under SSTP will collect tax for ALL 23 states
• Four current CSPs, but two more are being added this month and AccurateTax is one of them
• Usage of CSP services are FREE to Sellers
Sales Tax 101: SSTP Today
That’s today, what’s coming in the future?
Sales Tax 101: What will the future hold?What’s coming?
• “Amazon Tax” vs State of New York • Rhode Island, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland are following this model • Colorado is creating their own hybrid version for this • California is taking a second try and this apple • Hawaii and a few others tried and law was vetoed for now
• Main Street “Fair Tax” laws – federally mandated sales tax collection, likely modeled after the SSTP processes• More states joining SSTP
• Georgia coming online later this year • Wisconsin joined just last year • Other states are already “Advisory non-conforming” members
Bottom line, Sellers just want some peace of mind when it comes to sales tax collection, calculation, reporting and
remittance
NetBlazon/AccurateTax’s Solution History
•In the Miva Merchant world, NetBlazon has had sales tax module solutions available since 2002 •Zip-based Sales Tax module was a widely used module by many stores across the US
• In July 2008, Washington state became an SSTP state and began using zip+4 jurisdictional boundaries
• Zip Zip+4 was an order of magnitude more data for many states • But who knows their zip+4? • No Address Validation/Scrubbing service integrated with Miva Merchant• Zip+4 databases would be very large and would take a long time to load
and process • Specific state rules support was not part of the original module • Reporting and Jurisdictional tracking was not available with original module
AccurateTax was born as a result of the needs of the community
What is AccurateTax TaxTools?
TaxTools is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering that provides Address Validation and Sales/Use Tax rate
information for E-Business systems.
TaxTools provides integration with a variety of E-Business solutions:
• E-Commerce shopping cart solutions• Accounting systems• Backend enterprise resource planning systems• Custom Software Development Kit (SDK) capability
TaxTools uses USPS address databases and sales/use tax rate information provided by the States with our proprietary
algorithms to provide a valuable end-to-end service to a variety of users.
Why use AccurateTax TaxTools?
Zip+4 Rates and Boundaries are orders of magnitude more difficult to manage over state-wide or 5-digit boundaries
Sales Tax Holidays and Item Exclusions vary widely from state to state
Updates to Rates/Boundaries is included in the service
We don’t charge you for setup or the client-side module at all
Module updates are FREE to customers and customers can adjust their usage up or down as their needs dictate
New users can try the service for FREE to see if it meets their needs
Who benefits from using TaxTools?
Small & Medium Business (SMB) market
Accounting/Management Consultants
Enterprise Customers
Companies with gross sales under 5 million dollars annually Solution is priced to allow companies to grow their usage organically as their needs increase Basic and Advanced Solutions are ideal, but Enterprise is available
Who benefits from using TaxTools?
Small & Medium Business (SMB) market
Accounting/Management Consultants
Enterprise Customers
Companies with multiple nexus points and/or gross sales over 5 million
Expected higher transaction usage Multiple integration needs (shopping cart, accounting, ERP) Shifting inventory types and appropriate tax rules are
required Looking for a complete solution rather than a simple tax rate
calculator Primarily looking for the Enterprise solution exclusively
Who benefits from using TaxTools?
Small & Medium Business (SMB) market
Accounting/Management Consultants
Enterprise Customers
Accountants or Management Consultants responsible for filing sales tax on behalf of Sellers
Companies interested in having a dedicated sales tax resource for determining rates
Specialized systems and/or services for generating quotes, calculating rates or providing other detailed sales/use tax information
Who benefits from using TaxTools?
Small & Medium Business (SMB) market
Accounting/Management Consultants
Enterprise Customers
TaxTools Solutions – which solution do you need?
TaxTools Solutions
Address Validation / Scrubbing Service
• Takes partially completed or erroneously entered data for Shipping Addresses as input • Attempts to “scrub” the address information to find a valid US Postal Service (USPS) deliverable address
• Returns valid zip+4 zip codes for addresses
TaxTools Solutions
TaxTools – Basic Version
• Provides basic sales tax rate information based on provided zip codes
• No reporting capability • Does not perform calculations
• Does not provide address scrubbing, so any zip+4 zip codes are required to be present BEFORE we attempt to find a sales tax rate
TaxTools Solutions
TaxTools – Advanced Version
• Integrates Address Validation with Sales Tax calculations • Provides rounding rules support based on nexus state(s)
• Activity Reporting of scrubbed addresses and/or sales tax rates provided is available • Can work with multiple nexuses
TaxTools Solutions
TaxTools – Enterprise Version
• All the features of Advanced solution plus:
• Sales tax calculations performed based on state rules and product/tax class types
• Custom tax/Sales Tax Holiday support available
• Version to be used by SSTP Sellers
TaxTools in Action(demo)
How is TaxTools packaged and priced?
Based on customer's package level, any overages are charged based on their per call
fees
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Sellers signup for their desired package and estimated monthly calls (usage)
A call is defined as a discrete XML REST-call to our server from Seller's system
Calls can be for Address Validations or Sales Tax
Information
How is TaxTools packaged and priced?
Based on customer's package level, any overages are charged based on their per call
fees
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Sellers signup for their desired package and estimated monthly calls (usage)
A call is defined as a discrete XML REST-call to our server from Seller's system
Calls can be for Address Validations or Sales Tax
Information
How is TaxTools packaged and priced?
Based on customer's package level, any overages are charged based on their per call
fees
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Sellers signup for their desired package and estimated monthly calls (usage)
A call is defined as a discrete XML REST-call to our server from Seller's system
Calls can be for Address Validations or Sales Tax
Information
How is TaxTools packaged and priced?
Based on customer's package level, any overages are charged based on their per call
fees
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Sellers signup for their desired package and estimated monthly calls (usage)
A call is defined as a discrete XML REST-call to our server from Seller's system
Calls can be for Address Validations or Sales Tax
Information
How is TaxTools packaged and priced?
Based on customer's package level, any overages are charged based on their per call
fees
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Sellers signup for their desired package and estimated monthly calls (usage)
A call is defined as a discrete XML REST-call to our server from Seller's system
Calls can be for Address Validations or Sales Tax
Information
Questions?
AccurateTax Contact Information
Phone: 866.400.2444 Sales Inquiries: [email protected]
Pete’s direct email: [email protected]
