avalara-vs-taxjar

Avalara and TaxJar are popular tax compliance software products. Using these tools, businesses can automate tax compliance while also ensuring taxes are filed correctly and on time.

Avalara is often used by medium to large businesses to handle tax filing and reporting. These businesses appreciate Avalara’s flexible pricing that allows organizations to pay for the number of transactions and features they need. Businesses with many other technologies can also make good use of Avalara’s many integrations.

TaxJar is more popular with smaller businesses that utilize TaxJar’s simple API and interface. These companies benefit from TaxJar’s strong automation tools with popular ecommerce products like Shopify and Amazon. Using TaxJar makes it easy for non-technical staff to set up and manage tax compliance.

Features

Avalara and TaxJar both offer all the expected features of tax compliance software, but they also have a few features that set them apart.

Avalara has many integrations that allow it to seamlessly fit into almost any business without interrupting the existing software infrastructure. Avalara also offers flexible pricing options, so businesses can purchase the plan that matches the number of transactions they make. This makes Avalara an affordable choice for businesses that make a small number of transactions but still want to automate tax compliance.

TaxJar has fewer integrations compared to Avalara, but the integrations that exist contain powerful automation tools. Businesses using popular ecommerce products like Shopify can export data directly to TaxJar without downloading any CSV files. This makes TaxJar usable for businesses without in house technical staff.

Limitations

Though Avalara and TaxJar provide strong features for tax compliance software, each one also has some limitations that are important to consider.

Avalara requires users to manually import tax data in CSV files, which may need reformatting depending on the integration. This can be a problem for companies that are looking for closer to total automation of tax compliance. Many users have reported slow customer support response time from Avalara as well.

TaxJar requires the manual input of tax rates for most countries outside of the United States and the European Union. This can be a major downside to companies that engage in international business. TaxJar only provides email support at the basic pricing, and many users have reported that customer support at the basic price point can be slow or otherwise not useful.

Pricing

Avalara offers three pricing tiers for small businesses, differentiated primarily by the number of yearly transactions they cover. $50 per year covers 250 transactions, $95 per year covers 500 transactions, and $200 per year covers 1500 transactions. Avalara also offers plans for large businesses, but these are priced individually depending on the business in question.

TaxJar offers 2 pricing tiers. The basic pricing tier costs $17.00 per month and includes basic tax compliance features and email support. TaxJar Plus is priced depending on the business and includes extensive support features, advanced integrations, and user management features. TaxJar also provides a 30 day free trial for users who want to try the software before purchasing.