Growth Activities: Life (and Tax) Changing

Growth isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. In fact, companies expend a great deal of energy and resources deciding how to achieve specific goals, and where to prioritize their time and investments.

Sales and use tax is often left out of this equation, especially when it doesn’t appear to correlate to the task at hand. Certain growth activities, like adding new locations or sales channels, signal a need to alter sales and use tax compliance practices. With others (like financing rounds, acquisitions, or technology platform changes), tax implications aren’t as obvious and are more likely to be overlooked. Yet these are often the situations where compliance strategies can have the greatest impact.

Below is a brief glimpse of how sales and use tax compliance can come into play for 3 business growth activities that can be life (and tax) changing: financing events, M&A, and technology platform integration projects.  Here’s what you should be aware of when going through these processes.

Financing events

For any financing event, public or private, investors look closely at how you plan to grow the business, and how you are managing it now. Poor sales tax management practices or unfavorable audit outcomes can impact valuation, jeopardize funding, or even nullify deals. High visibility events like funding rounds and IPOs can bring your business to the attention of state auditors looking to draw in more tax dollars.

Mergers and acquisitions

The combination of people, assets, systems, and processes is no simple feat. So, it’s not surprising that business integration issues following M&A transactions are one of the biggest things keeping company execs up at night.  Between due diligence, integration, accounting/financial reporting, and post-acquisition compliance, who has time for sales tax? It can be easy to overlook tax obligations or liabilities, which can raise red flags with investors early in the process, or with auditors later.

Technology platform changes, consolidations or upgrades

During change events, it’s good practice to evaluate your financial systems and fill any gaps with new solutions that can advance your growth objectives. For example, tax automation software that unites critical transaction data from disparate systems and processes can alleviate compliance issues during post-merger integrations. This kind of software could reduce audit risk and avoid delays in closing the books.

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Permission to reprint or repost given by Avalara. Content previously published at www.avalara.com/blog. Post written by Kerry Alexander.