Sales tax can be a pain to deal with.
With stacks of paperwork, hefty amounts of calculations, and lots of challenging obstacles, it’s no wonder why sales tax compliance is one of the most difficult business processes. 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.
TaxJar makes it easy to simplify the complex world of sales tax, giving your business an edge. This review will cover all aspects of 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? Taxjar Versus Avalara
Since its inception in 2013, TaxJar serves business enterprises and online sellers, intending to ease the already complicated process of sales tax compliance. The United States has over 11,000 tax jurisdictions, each of which has different rules depending on the district or state. 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. Businesses were tasked with handling varying degrees of tax burdens, and these may vary based on varying 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. That way, you can prioritize what matters the most with your business, without the added hassles of hefty tax computation.
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. Taxjar Versus Avalara
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.
- The AutoFile tool will take care of all the details for you.
- 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
- Although TaxJar is known to be generally convenient, it may be a bit complicated on the first try, especially for the uninitiated merchant.
- The interface can also sometimes be inconvenient, as some users have reported cases of having more than five browser tabs open just to file one state’s tax return.
- Pricing for lower-tier plans may vary depending on factors like additional AutoFile fees if credits are exhausted. We’ll be discussing pricing soon.
What is the cost of TaxJar?
TaxJar offers three pricing options: Premium, Professional, or Starter. Let’s take a deeper look at these subscription tiers.
Starter
Starting at $19/month, the Starter plan provides essential sales tax services for 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 also get data integrations and up to four free AutoFiles per annum. In addition, Starter allows support for multiple business accounts, as well as e-mail support.
Professional
More challenges are likely to come if your company has more experience and a wider reach. That’s where the Professional plan comes in. 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 includes an increased limit on data import and API integration, from 3 to 10,10,000 advanced API calls per hour, up to 10 team managers users, and 12 free AutoFiles per calendar 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. Premium is not priced in a fixed range like the other plans. It is fully customizable to meet your business’s needs and can be negotiated through TaxJar’s customer support.
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! Taxjar Versus Avalara
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The Features of TaxJar
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! It will instantly calculate the sales tax for you, and it will always match the correct rates with the customer’s address.
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. The platform’s team tracks all changes related to sales tax rates and laws, and integrates them into the platform regularly.
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 this is automatically compiled into reports for different states, complete with breakdowns from 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. The dashboard allows you to see detailed analysis based upon your activity. You’re also always up-to-date, as TaxJar collects data automatically all the time.
AutoFile
AutoFile makes this platform stand out among 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.
AutoFile’s greatest asset is the fact that you are guaranteed to not 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. For starter plan subscribers, you can only get 4 AutoFile enrollments free of charge 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. Taxjar Versus Avalara
Determining the nexus can be confusing. Thankfully, you don’t have to jump through hoops, because TaxJar provides accessible insights to keep you on track. The economic nexus dashboard doesn’t just let you check activity between states but also lets you know if you’ve reached the required nexus 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 be seamlessly integrated 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.
Other partner services that are integrative with TaxJar include Square, Xero, Walmart, Salesforce, Magento, and WooCommerce among others. You can also import data from third-party service providers through CSV if you don’t see your online business solution.
Is TaxJar the Perfect 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’s been a top pick for these reasons: 1) it’s easy to use, 2) it’s time-saving, and 3) it helps you and your business in many ways.
It’s highly recommended, and we are right to be so. However, it isn’t perfect in every aspect. Some users had issues with customization while others experienced problems with TaxJar’s integration to Shopify and other apps. There were also issues with interface misunderstandings and automated calculation. These issues could be addressed.
All other issues aside, TaxJar would be the perfect fit for any business. This is a great tool to add to your business strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions Taxjar Versus Avalara
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Which 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.
Does TaxJar work in other countries outside the U.S?
TaxJar features are currently limited to the United States. They have not yet been extended to other countries outside US jurisdiction. Only the TaxJar API tool is supported in a few non-US territories. TaxJar API is available to businesses in Canada, Australia and the UK.
Can I cancel my TaxJar account? How can I cancel my TaxJar account?
You can cancel your TaxJar account if you ever feel dissatisfied with the service by going to your account settings. You can cancel your subscription by clicking the red link once you have accessed Plans & Billings.
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 solution for sales tax compliance. There are many other options, some with better features, compatibility with more countries, and some with lower price ranges. The following are alternatives to TaxJar.
- Avalara
- Sovos Taxify
- Vertex
- TaxCloud