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Avalara to Offer Sales Tax Certification

Ray Bigley, AvalaraAvalara is preparing to offer sales tax certification to accountants. The Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based sales-and-use tax vendor says the program stemmed from the alliances it has created with state CPA societies and accounting firm associations. Ray Bigley, the company’s VP of business and corporate development compared the upcoming education opportunities to Intuit’s ProAdvisor designation.

 

“There will be a different levels of certification for sales tax by Avalara,” says Bigley. The levels would start by providing talking points to accountants interested in learning about sales tax and scale up to such things as instruction on installing Avalara on products such as QuickBooks and NetSuite. There will be exams to test applicants.

The offering, scheduled for introduction next month, grew out of requests by state societies. So far, Avalara has established alliances with the Kansas and Maryland societies. It has similar arrangements with PrimeGlobal, MooreStephens and AGN International-North America,

Avalara places a link on the websites of its partners that visitors can use to sign up for the Accountants Resource Center, an online repository of information about sales tax. In particular, it provides information on the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013. Bigley notes that besides offering information, Avalara is also speaking at these organizations to tell accountants how they could be affected by changes in laws regarding sales taxes.

CPAs do not need to be experts in these taxes. However, “they need to have a resource and they need to have a way to answer questions in professional manner,” Bigley says. As clients increasingly feel the impact of the Marketplace Fairness Act, they are turning to their accounting advisors. “As a CPA you don’t want to be caught without an answer,” Bigley continues.

Bigley says CPAs have been calling Avalara for more information, after visiting the resource center, although he says that was not the purpose for establishing the relationship

 

Bob Scott
Bob Scott has provided information to the tax and accounting community since 1991, first as technology editor of Accounting Today, and from 1997 through 2009 as editor of its sister publication, Accounting Technology. He is known throughout the industry for his depth of knowledge and for his high journalistic standards.  Scott has made frequent appearances as a speaker, moderator and panelist and events serving tax and accounting professionals. He  has a strong background in computer journalism as an editor with two former trade publications, Computer+Software News and MIS Week and spent several years with weekly and daily newspapers in Morris County New Jersey prior to that.  A graduate of Indiana University with a degree in journalism, Bob is a native of Madison, Ind
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