Indinero prevents sales tax headaches
Results
Improved processes
Increased compliance
Enabled growth
Summary
Results
- Improved processes
- Increased compliance
- Enabled growth
Client challenges
- Tax complexity
- Compliance risk
Partnership focus
- Accountant Referral Partner
Company overview
Partner
Indinero
Industry
Accounting Services
Founded in 2009, indinero is a trusted financial operations firm for small businesses. With a diverse clientele of nearly 1,000 venture-funded startups and small businesses across the United States, indinero provides a comprehensive suite of services, including outsourced CFO, tax compliance and planning, payroll, accounting, and bookkeeping.
Tax challenges
Small businesses have long relied on tax professionals or CPAs for year-end compliance needs, compiling, reconciling, and correcting their clients’ books and producing financial reporting. With the increasing adoption of cloud-based business systems, these small business owners have turned to outsourced CFO, tax, payroll, and bookkeeping services, giving them real-time guidance and daily operational support from these financial and business experts.
Unfortunately, there’s still one major area of business operations that’s overly complex and vexes many entrepreneurs: sales tax compliance. In the U.S., there are more than 13,000 taxing jurisdictions, including states, cities, counties, and a variety of special districts. Each has unique tax rates and rules defining taxability of products and services, including special exemptions, sales tax holidays, and other factors that can pose significant tracking challenges for businesses trying to stay compliant. In addition to these inherent complexities, states are continuing to adapt and amend sales tax regulations related to economic nexus following the South Dakota vs. Wayfair Supreme Court ruling in 2018.
“Many small businesses don’t know how hard these local taxes can be until they are already facing a sales tax audit,” says Brian Miller, a CPA and tax director at indinero. “As a trusted advisor, we see where our clients do business, where they have sales and staff, and we proactively bring up the sales tax issue with them. But even with our staff of 230, we don’t have the bandwidth or expertise to manage the tedious requirements of sales tax compliance across thousands of jurisdictions. So we recommend our clients use Avalara.”
Why Avalara?
Avalara’s tax automation software works together to create a holistic compliance platform. Products are available as a suite or as stand-alone options to customize based on your business needs. According to Brian, indinero selected Avalara as its preferred referral partner for the sales tax compliance needs of its clients after exploring other solutions on the market and finding that none were as comprehensive or easy for clients to use. “Avalara is by far the best in this area,” he says, “and they have sales tax and legal experts on their staff to ensure compliance.”
The firm engages with Avalara for referrals and uses a standardized onboarding checklist that helps the team identify the core areas of services a business will need. It’s an approach that Brian sees as essential to indinero’s success — and also includes tasking a specific staff member as point person for such referrals in a practice area.
Client challenges
- Tax complexity
- Compliance risk
Partnership focus
- Accountant Referral Partner
Results
- Improved processes
- Increased compliance
- Enabled growth
“With Avalara, our clients know where they should file, when they should file, and how much sales tax they should be collecting and remitting.”
—Brian Miller
CPA and tax director
“With Avalara, our clients know where they should file, when they should file, and how much sales tax they should be collecting and remitting.”
—Brian Miller
CPA and tax director
Results
“As a referral partner, we are able to point our clients toward Avalara’s solutions, enabling them to access the resources and technology they need for sales and use tax compliance,” says Brian. “With Avalara, our clients know where they should file, when they should file, and how much sales tax they should be collecting and remitting.”
“For example, we have one client who does online software sales throughout the country,” Brian explains. “Some of it is custom software and some is canned. They were not sure what areas they were required to file sales tax returns in and why. We reached out to Avalara to help with a nexus study and complete the proper filings for the client to stay compliant.”
For professionals who provide tax compliance services, Brian noted that their clients’ year-end source documents can provide some hints as to whether a business may need to revisit their sales tax processes or turn to a provider like Avalara.
“Tax pros should note whether a business added or changed business locations, had sales or staff in new states, or if they suddenly increased volume or dollar amount sales growth in one or more jurisdictions,” says Brian. “Since these issues can change their sales tax reporting requirements in different states, the tax professional should alert the client and help them resolve the situation before it becomes a problem.”
“We are currently working with the Avalara team to become more familiar with the other Avalara products,” Brian concludes. “Specifically, we are looking at the product created specifically for smaller organizations with less complex filing requirements.”
