A quick Google search will turn up lists of the worst jobs in the United States, ranging from simply gross (like tasting pet food) to the most dangerous (logging, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics). We would like to add our vote to the list: calculating sales and use tax.
First of all, let’s be honest: at least some of you out there don’t actually know the difference between sales and use tax. (Here’s a hint: sales tax is collected from consumers, normally but not always, exclusively on in-state purchases. Use tax is paid in lieu of sales tax, by consumers on out-of-state purchases in many states, as well as wholesalers who buy goods that eventually become used in a taxable manner. For more detail, Sales Tax Institute offers a great resource on the difference between sales tax and use tax.)
Once you get that far, you’ll spend a significant amount of time figuring out tax jurisdictions. At what level do you determine sales and use taxes: the state level? The county level? Within a particular ZIP code? The answer to all of these is yes and no. Some states charge no sales or use taxes at all, others have different levels of sales versus use taxes, and still others have taxing jurisdictions that can vary by city or even from street to street. Keeping track of it all could easily become a second career – which is where we come in.
FastTax: new and improved tax calculation for 2019
Our DOTS FastTax service has always provided location-based sales and use tax rates and data, and has long leveraged our flagship DOTS Address Validation service to provide precise tax data for accurate US addresses. This year, we’ve made FastTax even more powerful with the addition of three new features:
- The GetBestMatch operation that can analyze even bad addresses to obtain accurate tax data, often at a more precise level than ZIP codes.
- The IsUnincorporated flag that allows you to bypass city tax rates in unincorporated areas. (And a new UnincorporatedTaxRate will be returned in a future release, to simplify this further.)
- We’ve also added full support for US offshore postal territories such as Guam and Micronesia.
For a deeper dive, read our post on FastTax improvements, written by Jonas Shaefer, Director of Engineering.
Tax calculation designed for your applications environment
As always, our real-time API capabilities allow seamless integration with your sales and order entry automation environments. with a focus on data quality and ease of integration. We support REST, SOAP, GET and POST requests in XML and JSON formats, compatible with all major programming languages. Want to see for yourself? Check out our Developer Guide and sample code segments online. You can even get a free trial key to test in your developer environment right now on FastTax’s product description page.
With the help of Service Objects, calculating sales and use tax is no longer one of the worst jobs in America – except for our engineers and data source partners, of course. (But don’t worry, we actually enjoy it.) Need more information on implementing FastTax with your applications? Contact us to speak with one of our product experts, and we’ll help make your sales and purchasing work is a lot less taxing.
