Avalara vs Zeffy

About

Avalara is a cloud-based tax compliance automation platform providing sales tax calculation, e-filing, and compliance management for businesses that need to calculate and remit sales tax accurately across thousands of US tax jurisdictions and international VAT/GST regimes. Acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2022 for approximately $8.4 billion after being publicly listed on NYSE (NYSE: AVLR), Avalara is headquartered in Seattle, Washington and serves over 30,000 customers — from e-commerce businesses to enterprise manufacturers — who need automated tax compliance as they sell across multiple states and countries.\n\nAvalara's core AvaTax product integrates with ERP systems (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics) and e-commerce platforms (Salesforce Commerce, BigCommerce, Magento) to automatically calculate the correct sales tax rate for every transaction based on the customer location, product type, and seller's nexus obligations. The post-2018 South Dakota v. Wayfair Supreme Court ruling expanded economic nexus to require online sellers to collect sales tax in states where they exceed sales thresholds — dramatically expanding the number of businesses needing automated tax compliance. Avalara's Returns product files and remits sales tax with the appropriate taxing authorities.\n\nIn 2025, Avalara competes with Vertex (acquired by private equity), TaxJar (acquired by Stripe), and Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE Indirect Tax for sales tax and VAT compliance platform share. The tax compliance automation market has grown significantly as global e-commerce expansion and the South Dakota v. Wayfair ruling increased compliance obligations across all business sizes. Avalara's 2025 strategy focuses on expanding internationally (VAT compliance in Europe and GST in India and Australia), deepening integration with more ERP and e-commerce platforms, and adding AI-powered exemption certificate management and tax research capabilities.