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.

1. Sales Tax Compliance
and Your Miva
Merchant Store
Presented By:
Rick Wilson
and Peter Petracco
Date: June 17, 2010

2. Introduction / Agenda
• 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

3. 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

4. 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?

5. 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

6. Sales Tax 101: SSTP Today
That’s today, what’s coming in the future?

7. 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

8. 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
•
•
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•
•
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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

9. 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.

10. 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

11. Who benefits from using TaxTools?
Small & Medium Business (SMB) market
Enterprise Customers
Accounting/Management Consultants

12. Who benefits from using TaxTools?
Small & Medium Business (SMB)
 Companies with gross sales under 5 million dollars annually
market
 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
Enterprise Customers
Accounting/Management Consultants

13. Who benefits from using TaxTools?
Small & Medium Business (SMB)
market
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
Accounting/Management Consultants

14. Who benefits from using TaxTools?
Small & Medium Business (SMB)
market
Enterprise Customers
Accounting/Management Consultants
 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

15. TaxTools Solutions – which solution do you need?

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. TaxTools
in Action
(demo)

21. How is TaxTools packaged and priced?
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
Based on customer's package level, any overages
are charged based on their per call fees

22. How is TaxTools packaged and priced?
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
Based on customer's package level, any overages
are charged based on their per call fees

23. How is TaxTools packaged and priced?
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
Based on customer's package level, any overages
are charged based on their per call fees

24. How is TaxTools packaged and priced?
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
Based on customer's package level, any overages
are charged based on their per call fees

25. How is TaxTools packaged and priced?
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
Based on customer's package level, any overages
are charged based on their per call fees

26. Questions?

27. AccurateTax Contact
Information
Phone: 866.400.2444
Sales Inquiries: info@accuratetax.com
Pete’s direct email: pete@accuratetax.com