Outsourcing 2.0… How to save your clients even more time and headache, and get paid to do it.

I suspect as a payroll service provider, you’ve never given much thought to the sales tax outsourcing concept or to the fact that your clients probably need to outsource sales tax as much as they do payroll. Sales Tax in and of itself is outside the standard thinking of a typical Payroll company and their core offering. The reality is payroll outsourcing and sales tax outsourcing are more closely aligned than you might think. While they operate in two different parts of a typical clients’ organization (one in the HR department the other in Finance) they both are non-revenue generating activities that are required by all businesses. Sales Tax, like payroll is a time consuming task that is filled with pitfalls. If not done correctly, your client faces significant fines/penalties and risks losing the business they have built. While payroll has a handful of tax implications, withholdings and other complexities to it, sales tax is an even more complex beast. With more than 11,000 taxing jurisdictions across the U.S. and thousands of tax law changes taking place annually, the landscape in which your client sells products and services is constantly shifting. With states operating at budget shortfalls and cracking down via audits, your clients are under constant threat of an audit notice and the financial damages non-compliance carries with it. Further, with pending legislation in place that threatens to impose the burden of sales tax on those who sell in the digital marketplace, the tax world is going to get even more complex for those who had previously not had worries about sales taxes on their online transactions. We like to think of Sales Tax Outsourcing as Outsourcing 2.0, and as we found as part of a recent survey… a vast majority of our thousands of current customers outsource both sales tax AND payroll. As payroll and HR outsourcing become a more generally accepted business practice, and is embraced by more and more businesses across the globe, we know that as business owners begin to realize the value behind outsourcing (in general) and they’ll look to find new ways to surrender other non-revenue generating tasks so they can focus on running their business. By using solutions offered by Avalara, your client can save many hours of manual sales tax work a year, ensure compliance and recognize a real cost savings of thousands of dollars. Our value proposition is IDENTICAL to yours … we remove the burdens of compliance and processing so you can focus on growing your business. Avalara is seeking to partner with payroll bureaus, PEOs and other outsourced solution companies like yours to get word out about the benefits of sales tax outsourcing. We know your clients look to you to help them when it comes to payroll and Human Resources “stuff,” we believe strongly that your introduction to Avalara’s suite of sales tax automation and outsourced services will be a game changer for them, and we are willing to pay commissions as high as 40% of first year revenues to you for facilitating the introduction. To learn more about what your clients are up against click here or contact Avalara directly at payrollpartners@avalara.com.