Sales-and-use-tax vendor Avalara plans to open an Accountants Resource Center on its website next week. The center will provide free state tax forms and applications for exemption certificates, along with tools such as white papers and videos, including webinars.

Mark Richardson, the company's director of product marketing, has described the center as "a knowledge and content repository for state and local tax information. Accounting professionals will have access to free rate information, state forms, links and blogs. Accountants will be able to access rates for virtually any locality via an interactive color-coded map from their computer or use a free smartphone application."

Richardson and other Avalara executives outlined features that would be added later this year, including possible links to accounting software vendor websites.

Avalara is also going to provide premium content such as an administrative console that is expected to go live this year. Paying customers, including accounting professionals, will be able to utilize a wizard that would enable them to enter profile information and have the system apply taxability rules to "determine whether a product you sell is taxable and where it is taxable and be able to download any connector [to an ERP system]," Richardson said.

Free services for accountants include the ability to access rates for virtually any locality via an interactive color-coded map. The system will display on the map the sales tax rate for any locality over which the cursor is placed and will change the display as the user repositions the cursor over new locations.

Although customers would get these services for free, they would be able to buy other products, for example, paying a yearly fee for electronic filing or more robust rate calculation system.