Annual Report

Sales and Use Tax in 2021:

What’s Changed?

Complexity Continues to Rule

As the rules governing economic nexus in the U.S. grow increasingly complex, it is important to define the sales and use tax changes being considered, the ramifications of new laws on remote sellers and marketplace facilitators and the varied approaches organizations take to effectively manage their tax obligations. For example, the end of 2020 had more than 14,000 bills being considered that could change sales tax compliance requirements. During that same time in 2019, there were only 7,000 bills.

The second annual Sovos Sales and Use Tax report delves into numerous issues impacting the industry, including the long-term implications on regulatory authorities from COVID-19 and how the existing tax gap is fueling new approaches to oversight and enforcement of current laws and standards. Tax and regulatory experts provide insights and technologists offer guidance and methods to help organizations understand how to reduce financial and reputational risk by remaining compliant.

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Last year showed that sales and use tax is changing and is changing at an increasingly fast pace. New policies capture tax more accurately and sooner. States continue to test the limits of organizations’ ability to track, process and remit sales tax. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic added an additional layer of complexity and uncertainty, with more states adding economic nexus requirements. 

Why this matters to your business

The digitization of tax is at center stage in many growing businesses’ agendas. Organizations are quickly determining that automated technology solutions are increasingly critical to ensure a positive user experience. Are you confident that your sales tax solution will keep pace with every change or update? As your company evolves and changes, can your tax solution keep pace? Are you facing costly database or hardware upgrades and replacements? What’s the best way to ensure your solution seamlessly scales along with your business needs – all while maintaining compliance and controlling costs?

Sales and use tax manual processes are quickly becoming obsolete, creating a substantial burden on your team to meet new requirements to remain compliant. To that extent, what are the opportunity costs of managing sales tax on your own? What other critical business functions could your team be focusing on instead? And let’s not forget a worst case scenario: What happens when you change your processes, choose to manage sales tax on your own and get it wrong? Having a cloud-based sales tax software can reduce manual work while also offering better integration, faster updates, more automated processes and easier data management.  

Why talk to Sovos

Sovos understands that sales tax is complicated, which is why we compiled data, best practices and guidance from real experts to make the process more efficient and seamless. This report discusses the current state of the industry and what is likely coming further down the line, helping you garner a more complete understanding so you can maintain compliance without losing productivity. 

Ready to take the first step toward modern tax compliance? Download the report and reach out to our team with any further questions.