Sales tax can be a pain to deal with.
Sales tax compliance is one the most complicated business processes. There are a lot of paperwork and calculations involved. But you may be surprised to find there’s an easier way out of it. TaxJar is a cloud-based, state-of the-art automated sales tax platform.
With TaxJar, all the challenges in sales tax are simplified, giving you and your business the upper hand. In this review, we’ll take you through all the things you need to know about this service. We’ll also share with you the pros and cons, and our final thoughts about whether or not TaxJar is worth adding to your business management ecosystem. Let’s go!
For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from Marcus Stonelius’ YouTube channel. To get a comprehensive overview of TaxJar, you may still want to check out our article below.
What Does TaxJar Do? Instructional Designer Taxjar
TaxJar was established in 2013 to serve online sellers and business entities. Its goal is to simplify the complex process of sales tax compliance. There are over 11,000 tax jurisdictions in the United States. Each one has its own rules and regulations. Businesses had to adhere to sales tax regulations back then. Rates were determined by where transactions were made, inventory stock locations, and the number of employees they employed.
Although it may seem simple from a superficial level, the process is actually quite complex. Companies were given different tax burdens to handle, which can vary depending on various factors. Things got even more complicated when in 2018, the US Supreme Court ruled that businesses must pay sales tax based on where the consumer purchased any product. This resulted in more burdens for business owners, having to learn and memorize tax codes upon tax codes on top of everything else.
It’s a lot to take, right? Well, TaxJar takes most of the complications in sales tax compliances and turns them into simple, less daunting tasks. This allows you to prioritize the most important aspects of your business without having to worry about tax computations.
What are its Pros and Cons
We’ve compiled a list of pros & cons to help you make a decision about whether TaxJar is right for you. Instructional Designer Taxjar
Pros
- TaxJar has been designed to be simple, quick, and automated. It will keep you in compliance for more than 11,000 tax jurisdictions across the U.S.
- With the AutoFile tool, you won’t need to worry much longer about due dates and late submissions of tax returns, etc., as TaxJar takes care of the rest for you – more on that later!
- Using TaxJar for sales tax compliance saves you more time compared to filing everything manually, giving you the chance to focus more on your business.
- It’s easy to use – you don’t need to be a full-on tax or accounting expert to understand how it works!
- TaxJar is not only less complicated than other software, but it also offers amazing customer support and a wealth of resources that will help you comply with sales tax.
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Cons
- TaxJar is generally easy to use, but it can be complicated for merchants who are not familiar with the process.
- Sometimes, the interface can be frustrating. Some users report having to open more than five tabs just to file a tax return for one state.
- The pricing of lower-tier plans can vary based on factors such as additional AutoFile fees if you’ve used up the free credits allowed in a plan – more on that as we’ll discuss the pricing shortly.
What is the cost of TaxJar?
TaxJar offers three pricing plans: Starter, Professional, and Premium. Let’s dive deep into these subscription tiers.
Starter
The Starter plan starts at $19/month and provides essential sales tax services to small businesses. The plan usually handles 200 total returns and purchase orders per month. However, the price could change if there is more. This tier offers free tools that can help you significantly with sales tax compliance like sales tax reporting, AI-driven product taxability recommendations, and basic CSV data imports.
Customers are also given data integrations with up to three e-commerce services and four free AutoFiles per year included within the tier. Starter also allows for support for multiple business accounts and e-mail support.
For professionals
If your business has more experience and expanded reach, more challenges may likely come ahead. The Professional plan is for you. Starting at $99/month, you get all the features from the Starter tier, plus some upgrades like full API access, advanced CSV imports, and economic nexus features.
Professional also includes increased data import and API integration limits from 3 to 10, 10,000 advanced API calls per minute, up to 10 team management users, and 12 free AutoFiles per year. If you use TaxJar Professional and manage to rake up to over 1,000 orders, you’re entitled to phone customer support on top of e-mail support. Like Starter, the price of this tier may change if you gain more than 200 allotted orders.
Premium
With TaxJar Premium, you get all the features you could ask for when it comes to sales tax compliance and much more. Apart from providing experienced businesses and enterprises with all the Starter and Professional features, Premium offers unlimited API and data integrations with many e-commerce and marketing services, unlimited AutoFiles, and an unlimited number of team users.
It also includes increased API calls per minute at 25,000, as well as white-glove support in the form of a dedicated account management team. Unlike the two previous plans, Premium does not have a definite price range. Instead, it’s fully customizable according to your business’s needs, and can be negotiable through TaxJar’s customer service.
Free Trial
TaxJar is worth a free 30-day trial. All the features and tools of the Professional plan are available to you, including API access, integrations, data imports and team and user management. This trial is free and you don’t have to pay anything upfront! Instructional Designer Taxjar
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TaxJar’s Features
Automatic Sales Tax Calculations
TaxJar comes with fully optimized functions and services built to ease the tax burden. One of those is its calculation process. TaxJar instantly calculates sales tax! Not only does it always ensure you the right rates in correspondence with your customer’s address and tax jurisdiction, but it also gives you the amounts in real-time.
With TaxJar, you won’t need to take long to calculate taxes one-by-one nor go through the added hassle of keeping up with the changes. Its team keeps track of all updates related to sales tax laws and rates and incorporates them into the platform periodically.
TaxJar Report
TaxJar provides more than just top-notch calculations. It also offers automated reports that include sales tax data from linked accounts, CSV imports and individual state sales tax reports. All of this data is automatically combined into reports for different states with breakdowns according to their tax jurisdictions.
TaxJar makes it easier and more accessible to organize reports. Everything is centralized, which allows for faster collaborations with your finance department. Its reporting dashboard lets you see in-depth analysis based on your recent activity. You’re also always up-to-date, as TaxJar collects data automatically all the time.
AutoFile
AutoFile is what makes the platform stand out from the rest. It is an electronic sales tax filing platform that collects user information from ecommerce providers and then files it into an automated sales tax report and payment to be submitted in any state.
What’s great about AutoFile is that you’re guaranteed to never miss a deadline! There’s no need to even go through the stress of paperwork or extra hands, as it’s designed to be easily manageable. Plus, it saves you time in the long run!
However, while it looks astoundingly impressive, it’s worth mentioning that it can be quite like a limited luxury to lower-tier subscribers. Starter plan users, for example, get only up to 4 free AutoFile enrollments per year.
Sales Tax Nexus Insights
If you use TaxJar in selling your items online, it’s important to know a thing about economic nexus. This topic has been covered briefly before. However, to sum up, rather than paying sales tax in your home state, customers will be required to pay sales tax in the states where they purchased your products. Instructional Designer Taxjar
It can be difficult to determine the nexus. Thankfully, you don’t have to jump through hoops, because TaxJar provides accessible insights to keep you on track. The economic nexus dashboard not only allows you to check the activity between states, but also shows you if you have reached the required threshold for each state. It comes in very handy, especially if your business continues to grow and reach more states.
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Integrations with Online Business Services
TaxJar can seamlessly integrate with many online business services. To determine sales tax, you can connect your account with online marketplaces such as Amazon, Etsy and eBay. Integrations can be made with e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce and other similar services that allow you to sell your listings, use payment gateways such as Stripe or PayPal, and operate management systems like Oracle NetSuite, Intuit QuickBooks and many more.
Square, WooCommerce, Walmart, Salesforce and Magento are just a few of the other services that can be integrated with TaxJar. You can also import data from third-party service providers through CSV if you don’t see your online business solution.
Is TaxJar the right fit for your business?
TaxJar has been a reliable and high-tech solution that addresses most of the issues business owners have in managing sales tax. It is a popular choice because it is easy to use, it saves time, and it can help your business in many other ways.
While it’s highly acclaimed – and rightly so – we can’t fully say it’s perfect in all aspects. Some users reported having problems with customization, while others found issues with TaxJar’s integration with some apps like Shopify. There were also issues with interface misunderstandings and automated calculation. These issues could be addressed.
Issues aside, if we answered the question “Is TaxJar the perfect fit for your business?” it would be a resounding YES! This is a great tool to add to your business strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions Instructional Designer Taxjar
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What types of businesses use TaxJar
Small and medium-sized businesses, large-scale companies, freelancers, and individuals can all use TaxJar. As of 2022, TaxJar has served over 20,000 businesses, including some of the well-known ones, like Coca-Cola, Land Rover, Microsoft, Shein, and many others.
Is TaxJar available in countries other than the U.S.
TaxJar features are currently limited to the United States. They are not yet available in other countries. The TaxJar API tool only is available in certain territories outside the United States. TaxJar API is available to businesses in Canada, Australia and the UK.
Can I cancel my TaxJar account? If so, how?
If you are unhappy with TaxJar’s service, you can cancel it by going to your account settings. Once you head over to Plans & Billings, you can click the red link that leads you to cancel your current subscription.
You will lose access to TaxJar’s reporting tools and AutoFile. You can reactivate or cancel your subscription at any time if you want to gain access to these services.
What other alternatives are there to TaxJar
TaxJar isn’t the only sales tax compliance solution available. There are many other options, some with better features, compatibility with more countries, and some with lower price ranges. We suggest you check out the following as alternatives to TaxJar:
- Avalara
- Sovos Taxify
- Vertex
- TaxCloud