watch the video or listen to the podcast.
follow 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 podcasts on apple podcasts here or grab the rss feed here.
with rick telberg
for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
the changes wrought by covid are rolling through the business world, pushing many of them into online commerce and cross-border sales and, ultimately, into new and nforeseen tax problems, according to liz armbruester, senior vp of global compliance at avalara.
more: six fixable problems at the irs | irs under covid: heroes or goats? | irs loves e-filing. so why the barriers? | two big (and obvious) ways irs could work with practitioners | eight ways to charm a client | plug small leaks before they become big floods | you’re only as good as your last screw-up | four issues with ‘quick’ tax questions | when to pick up the phone this tax season | these five procedures will simplify your tax season | 11 steps to better client tax instructions
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.
from her perch, see tracks how governments at all levels and across the globe are capitalizing on the rapidly digitizing business world to automatically collect taxes due. in the u.s., states and localities are gearing up to crack down on the new sources of revenues, leaving many businesses and their accountants still ill-equipped to handle the new rules, armbruester tells rick telberg for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间.
transcript
rick telberg: hi, this is rick telberg for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. today is liz armbruester, senior vp global compliance for avalara, the compliance automation company that’s moving quickly beyond just sales tax. first, liz, what are the changes you’re seeing from covid?
liz armbruester: hey, rick, thank you very much for having me. it’s great to be here. gosh, i wish we could almost stop talking about covid but– [laughs] we have had two-and-a-half plus almost going on three years, and here’s what i can tell you, there are so many changes still happening as a result of covid. if you think about from a business’s perspective, the push to e-commerce getting away from brick and mortar selling, many businesses were already doing that anyway, but, gosh, did we make a leap forward. that’s created opportunity but it’s also created complexity for businesses in the tax compliance world. they’re, very easily, able to sell to distance selling maybe where that was a challenge for them before and that means they can also be selling globally.
while that’s an opportunity for them to create new buyers and generate more revenue, it also creates some tax headaches with regard to maybe new tax schemes that they’re not familiar with, value-added tax as an example, or customs duties and import taxes when they’re selling cross border. in addition to that, i think businesses have to contend with some supply chain and maybe some labor woes. there are changing regulations about whether your employees who were maybe across the state board or working somewhere else created nexus for you. there were many states that offered a reprieve around that but have now gone back to, i guess, regular times in their regular legislation. businesses have to pay attention to that.
in addition to that, again, we always love to talk about marketplace facilitate our laws in economic nexus. lots of changes still happening there but they are now the standard across all the states and, again, with businesses shifting to do more selling online, they have to keep track of what all of those changes are. tax compliance that is increasingly digital has to stay in lockstep with all of those tax compliance regulatory, changes that are happening nearly every day.
as i said, i would love to say that covid still is maybe less of a topic, but in fact, it is still top of the chain with regard to impact to business.
rick: let’s break that down to digitalization and business is moving toward e-commerce. the question is, how extensive and lasting is that change?
liz: well, i use myself as an example, not as a business but as a consumer. i’m a bit old school, in that i love to go out and touch and feel product when i want to go buy it, but given covid, we didn’t have that option and more businesses made products and services accessible through digital channels and made the switch over for maybe folks that were a little bit more entrenched in the old way of buying, made it very easy for people like me. i know now that i’m very married to the convenience of it.
i think the combination of the customer experience that businesses have been focused on, the availability of product, and the reach that they now have to be able to reach more buyers in more places, all are indicators to me that this is not going away, but that said, i don’t also think that we will lose touch with the brick and mortar sale. i think that the balance has shifted, but i don’t think we’re going to shift all the way over to the extreme of only buying things right in a digital capacity but i do think it’s here to stay.
rick: the revenue agencies have noticed we’re three years into a wayfair decison in the us, and that’s just the us. how are revenue agencies changing with the digitalization, cross-border sales, and the e-commerce surge?
liz: i think in a couple of different ways. one interesting note about that is, as we entered the pandemic, so i think march, april, may 2020, many state agencies were very, very concerned that they were not going to be collecting the revenue that they expected. they expected budget shortfalls, et cetera, and here we are seeing states like california with surpluses.
with that said, you can be darn sure that revenue agencies are going to focus [laughs] on sales and use tax sales because they want to make sure that they’re getting accurate reporting, they’re collecting everything that is due. they’ve made a transition. while we’re all out here as consumers and businesses trying to make all of this stuff work, their business as well. while many of them have been maybe rooted still in some paper-driven processes, i’ve seen many of them shift into a more digital environment and audits didn’t stop. they maybe slowed down while we were really in the thick of covid, but many of those state agencies have also determined ways to do digital auditing.
i think that’s a shift that businesses need to take into consideration because the auditors, while maybe not physically present with a business when they’re conducting an audit will expect a business to be able to provide the digital version of all of their documentation and transactions, et cetera. that’s a shift that is happening alongside the more global transformation of all of our digital data and processes as well, but given the fact that we figured out and businesses have figured out how to conduct business online, there will absolutely be a focus of revenue agencies, like i said, to ensure that they’re getting all that is due.
rick: how are you seeing that play out on the ground with businesses and their accountants in general? are people screaming in pain?
liz: [chuckles] i don’t think so quite yet. again, for a couple of reasons, you always have a spectrum. when any transformation happens, there’s always a spectrum. there’s the early adopters and the laggards from one side to the other. those that i think maybe, for example, that could be hit by an audit who are less prepared, might be on the side of crying out, however, many have made that transformation just because their business has necessitated it and while audits, for example, are never a great experience, certainly having the preparation of your data in a digital format for an auditor who expects that, it can be made a lot more simple.
now, i would say that, oftentimes the pain for businesses really comes from just managing the information around has my business activity created economic access for me. i’d love to say that in 2018, when the supreme court case was decided that the early adopter states that created wayfair like laws both in marketplace and economic nexus made their laws and they were there to stay, what we’ve actually seen is that many of those laws have changed over time. most of them are threshold-based, growth sales, transactions, maybe a combination of be easy to say, “hey, for the states that i’m selling into, i know what the thresholds are, i know that i’ve created nexus, et cetera,” but the fact is that some of those laws have changed.
as is true with any component of tax, you’ve got to keep up with it and that’s the part that i think sometimes accountants and businesses alike really struggle with, which is, are the activities that i have nexus creating, what’s changed, what do i need to keep pace with, how is that going to impact my business? that can be really time-consuming for businesses of all sizes, small to large, and can really detract from what they would rather be doing, which is, of course, generating revenue for their business.
rick: we’re living in a new digital world with e-commerce, omnichannel, marketing and sales, borders have collapsed in terms of how people can do business and where they can do business. is that good for the economy? are you seeing that that phenomenon is generating new business opportunity or new business casualties?
liz: well, i think it’s probably a mix of both, really, depending on the type of business you are, the industry you’re in, et cetera. what i can tell you is that global e-commerce, of course, has just exploded in recent years, and personally, i feel like is showing no signs of abating. from approximately, i think, 1.6 trillion in 2015 global retail e-commerce sales are on track to reach 4.9 trillion, so 1.6 trillion to 4.9 trillion going from 2015 to 2021. estimates are out there saying we could surpass 7 trillion by 2025. my belief, based on that data, of course, is that new markets, new opportunities are really opening to businesses at a rapid rate.
now, that said, all of that volume, the enormous volume of cross-border shipments also puts a strain on supply chains. we know that there’s a lot of closures, we’ve heard in the news, a lot of port backlogs, labor shortages that are still ongoing, exacerbated by what’s happening with covid. all of that adds to burdens that international sellers, who already have to deal with complicated cross-border compliance issues, but they’re dealing with all of that on top of it. i think to your question of is it helping, hurting, are we seeing more shrinkage or growth, i definitely think we’re seeing a shift. it’s more growth, but alongside of that comes a little bit of a growth challenge because business is being done differently and because we still have covid with us.
rick: avalara is moving beyond sales tax into various forms of compliance. can you explain that? we always knew avalara as the sales tax software company, what’s it becoming now?
liz: well, very proud to, yes, have our roots in sales and use tax and solving problems for businesses of all sizes who have to contend with the complexity of sales tax but, as most businesses know, the compliance journey for customers often extends well beyond sales and use tax. now, as we’ve just talked about in a global world where it just has become so much more simple for businesses to transact with sellers that are outside of our borders, it’s natural for avalara to want to enable and solve the burden of tax complexity along the compliance journey. that extends beyond sales and use tax.
we’ve made multiple acquisitions over our many years of existence and want to help customers who have to contend with other tax types, for example. whether that’s lodging in hospitality, communications tax, that’s a really hot topic [chuckles] these days and covered in our tax changes report in a significant amount of depth, but just thinking about the challenges there that oftentimes become adjacent to sales and use tax. hospitality is actually a great one. when you think about a stay at a hotel, for example, you might have meals tax sales and use tax a variety that all have to be put onto a single invoice. we’re starting to see those areas bleed together and it’s not just as simple as solving for one particular tax type.
we have extended breadth in the content that we provide, the taxability, tax calculations, but then also thinking about, again, the journey that customers go on. as a new business, registrations and licenses, or maybe an ongoing need for licenses is something that businesses have to contend with, and oftentimes navigating that with a regulatory agency can be really complex. just signing up as a new business, for example, and knowing what license do i need or licenses do i need can take hours. we’ve created a simple and easy way for businesses to find a one-stop shop with us to be able to do that.
that extends over the journey of document management, making sure that tax-exempt documents are managed and stored. going back to that digital comments i made, if the auditor comes knocking, it’s great to be able to have all of that in a digital format, a single place to be able to go and provide that to an auditor. there are other elements of the compliance journey that again are extending, and especially when you think about it from a global perspective. less so here in the us, but more so outside of our borders. we are in a world where near-time or real near-time compliance is present today.
what do i mean by that?
well, we think about our sales and use tax compliance reporting, being post-transaction. you and i transact in a period of time, we’re going to report that transaction and remit the tax liability due to the tax agency, typically, maybe 30 days post that transaction. it could be a little bit longer depending on the size of business you are. in other parts of the world, it doesn’t work that way. we are operating much closer to the point of transaction.
avalara spent some time investing in technology and abilities to help customers deal with that near real-time or real-time transaction requirement, i.e, opportunities for technology to create a connection between a business and a government within electronic invoicing platform, for example. i would tell our us audience here to pay attention to that. if you’re not already dealing with that because you’re operating in an international capacity that will be coming to an environment near you as well. lots of change happening at avalara but all with an effort to help our global customers deal with the burden of tax compliance.
rick: what does electronic invoicing mean?
liz: great question. i think about it this way, i am all about simplicity, so trying to break this down into very simplistic terms, if you and i are transacting and you’re the seller, i’m the buyer, you’ve created an invoice, and that lines out the specific things that i’m going to be purchasing from you. well, electronic invoicing is just- what was a paper in invoice, but now in a digital format. well, where does the tax regulatory agency come into that?
in many cases, they would like to see that electronic invoice either before you and i transact with the tax calculated on it so they know what to expect in the recording period, or they would like to see it, maybe 1, 2, 3, 4 days post-transaction. that electronic invoice oftentimes needs to be in a common format and needs to be provided to them electronically via api or some other mechanism where they’re going to have record of that transaction that happened between you and me.
there are standardized formats templates, et cetera, that have been created, being created now, really, on a country-by-country basis or region-by-region basis. avalara has found themselves squarely in that environment to help businesses get that connection and transfer that data as necessary based on the country’s regulations.
rick: liz armbruester, any final words?
liz: well, i would say that as we make our way into 2022, the impact of the pandemic on consumer behavior, on sales tax policy will continue to be felt. i know that businesses, in my opinion, should continue to brace for increased enforcement of remote sales tax laws as tax authorities shift their attention back to sales tax. for all of our businesses operating globally, again, there are a significant number of changes that are out there for them to pay attention to. like i always say, it’s the one thing in tax that remains constant and that is change. we’ve got more of it on the horizon for 2022.
rick: liz armbruester. thank you very much. i appreciate it.