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Understanding The “Use” In “Sales and Use Tax” – Avalara Webinar Tuesday May 14, 2013

April 23, 2013 by Wayne Schulz

Unless you live in one of five states that don’t collect sales tax (for now), chances are sales tax is something you deal with regularly as a consumer. And while there are many intricacies businesses face when collecting sales tax (what rate to charge, when & where to file, etc.), most of us understand the concept in general.

Unlike sales tax, very few of us understand use tax regulations, let alone comply with them. Put simply, use tax (aka consumer use tax) is a sales tax that is collected and remitted by the buyer rather than the seller.

It is estimated that in the 45 states that have sales tax, and therefore also have use tax, only 1.6% of taxpayers actually pay it. While state governments don’t have the bandwidth to hunt down every penny individual consumers didn’t pay on tax-free (but not tax-exempt) online purchases, auditors are not shy about digging into purchase records to find use tax violations when auditing businesses.

There are a variety of scenarios that create use tax liability, and each of these situations, if not handled properly, can expose your organization to audit risk. Attend this webinar to learn how you can reduce your exposure by accurately self-assessing use tax.

When: Tuesday May 14, 2013 2:30 pm EDT

Click Here To Register

Sales Tax Reseller Certificates Best Practices – Avalara Webinar May 9, 2013 – 1pm EDT

April 23, 2013 by Wayne Schulz

Avalara is a third party provider of outsource sales tax processing. This service integrates directly to your Sage 100 ERP and correctly computes sales tax based on geographic location and current tax rules and rates. In addition to computational services Avalara can also file your sales tax returns and manage the headache of compiling and updating reseller certifications which you’ve collected from your exempt customers.

Join sales tax processing provider Avalara for a reseller certificate best practices for collecting and managing certificates to reduce sales tax audit risk. Ways to improve your processes while keeping cost of collection and amount of time managing certs to a minimum.

When: May 9, 2013 – 10:00 am PDT / 1:00 pm EDT

Cost: $ 0

Click here to register for Reseller Certificate Best Practices

How To Allocate Sales Tax To Inventory Purchases In Sage 100 ERP

March 7, 2013 by Wayne Schulz

In some instances you may find that you would like to record the sales tax paid on your inventory purchases as part of the cost of inventory (consult your tax advisor on whether this applies to you).

Here’s how to do it in Sage 100 ERP fka MAS90 or MAS200:

Open Library Master / Common and select Sales Tax Code Maintenance.
Review the warning message and click ‘OK’.
Select the desired Tax Code from the lookup or enter a new code if needed.
Select the checkbox next to ‘Expense to Vendor/Item’.
Select the Line for tax class TX.
Make sure the ‘Purchases’ ox is checked.
Confirm that the ‘Tax Rate’ is greater than 0.00.
Set the Non-Recoverable % to 100.00%
Click ‘OK’
Accept
Repeat for all tax codes needed.

Free SpeedTax Sales Tax Annual Filing Through December 19, 2010

December 7, 2010 by Wayne Schulz

If you hate filing sales tax returns as much as most people – check this offering from SpeedTax. They’re an outsourced sales tax processing service that integrates to MAS90 and MAS200 accounting software to provide accurate sales tax calculations.

If you think the federal government isn’t looking to recoup every penny of tax owed them to make up for budget shortfalls — then just keep preparing your sales tax manually.

If however you think increased tax compliance is part of the “new normal” you might leave sales tax computation and return preparation to the professionals.

Through December 19, 2010 Speed Tax has this special offer:

SpeedTax Will Prepare Your Annual Tax Filing at NO COST!

More businesses than ever before are choosing to outsource their sales and use tax returns and remittance burden to SpeedTax, because our service is easy to use, affordable, and technologically advanced, keeping your business up-to-date on nearly 17,000 jurisdictions nationwide, and allowing you to offload the most tedious, time-consuming, resource-intensive sales tax-related tasks to us. Now is the time to outsource your rapidly expanding sales tax burden and risk to SpeedTax.

For more info:

SpeedTax Sales Tax Preparation

MAS 500 7.3 Gets Native Avalara Sales Tax Processing Code – Eases Upgrade Process

March 23, 2010 by Wayne Schulz

Avalara announced yesterday that their Sales Tax for MAS 500 (aka Sage Sales Tax) now has the code embedded into the MAS 500 version 7.3 release.

Sales tax processing embedded in MAS 500 allows for the user to receive accurate tax computations on each order that’s processed through the system. The monthly or quarterly sales tax returns can also be processed for any state – with resulting forms transmitted to the appropriate state.

Sales tax processing is the type of procedure that most companies take for granted — until challenged on an audit. With states increasingly under pressure to raise revenues it’s increasingly likely that more audit resources will be deployed to verify that companies are charging and collecting proper amounts of sales tax.

According to Sage,

Sage MAS 500 and Sage Sales Tax developers worked together and added code (hooks) specifically for Sage Sales Tax in the base MAS 500 code for 7.3. This was done so users who installed Sage Sales Tax for MAS 500 7.3 would not have to obtain updates from Avalara each time MAS 500 released a Monthly Update.

Avalara (www.avalara.com), the leading provider of Web-based sales tax automation and compliance solutions, announced today that Sage Sales Tax, Powered by AvaTax™, is now embedded within the code base of Sage MAS 500, beginning with version 7.3. Sage’s award winning research and development team led the integration effort to address significant customer demand and to enhance customer experience.

“This is a major endorsement from one of the industry’s most highly regarded providers of ERP and other business applications”

“Sage Sales Tax, Powered by AvaTax, is a great example of how Sage is executing on our strategy to deliver hosted services that make the most sense for our customers,” said Alan Bryant, Sage senior vice president. “Integrating key hosted, SaaS, and other cloud-based service offerings into Sage’s on-premise business applications gives our customers the best of both worlds.”

via: Avalara Press Release

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