Vertex Launches Address Cleansing Service For Increased Tax Accuracy And Reduced Audit Exposure
New service allows companies to pinpoint tax jurisdictions to apply accurate sales and use tax
Vertex Inc., the leading provider of corporate enterprise tax solutions, recently announced the launch of an Address Cleansing Service. This new Vertex offering supports companies' increasingly complex needs for ensuring accurate sales tax calculations and reducing the associated audit risk. The new service leverages Vertex's sales tax jurisdiction and rate research that is part of its industry leading indirect tax solution, Vertex Indirect Tax O Series.
The service allows companies to send customer addresses to Vertex in a common industry format. Vertex's Address Cleansing Service then assigns accurate ZIP code data using the ZIP+4 format to all addresses and provides precise association to tax jurisdictions to support accurate sales and use tax calculations.
"The flexibility of our service means that companies can cleanse all of their addresses, or any portion of them, at a time of their choosing to coordinate with busy selling seasons, system maintenance windows or other factors that make each company unique," said Gerry Hurley, Vice President of Opportunity Management for Vertex.
Vertex Address Cleansing Service comes as sales and use tax rate and regulations continue to be difficult for companies to track. At the end of 2011, there were over 9,600 taxing jurisdictions across the U.S. with an average of 651 new and changed sales and use tax rates per year. The resulting sales tax data that companies must track and manage is massive, as tax jurisdiction and rate changes must be applied to transactions for accurate sales and use tax calculation.
"The sheer amount of data that companies need to track to accurately charge and remit sales and use taxes has become monumental," said Hurley. "Vertex's Address Cleansing Service gives companies a solution for tracking sales tax changes and applying them across transaction and customer data."
In many cases companies are only tracking jurisdictional changes by five digit ZIP code numbers, while tax jurisdictions extend across multiple ZIP codes and geographic boundaries. Vertex's Address Cleansing Service uses primary five digit ZIP code data, as well as four additional digits, known as ZIP + 4, to determine more specific geographic segments inside specific ZIP codes.
The result is reliable identification of state, county, city and district level tax jurisdictions, accurate calculation for jurisdictions that cross geographic boundaries and reduced exposure to sales and use tax audits.
"By applying ZIP + 4 data to a company's customer transactions, Vertex's Address Cleansing Service not only tax sensitizes customer data, it also helps improve efficiencies across the organization," said Hurley. "What's more, by correcting and standardizing addresses to benefit shipping, billing, marketing and customer service, companies experience increased accuracy, reduced risk and overall operational improvement."
Use of the new service can be timed around company needs, including seasonality in the business, quarterly updates and internal system upgrades. The flexibility to leverage the Address Cleansing Service at regular intervals throughout the year is critical to maintaining accurate data.
About Vertex
Founded in 1978, Vertex Inc. is the leading provider of corporate enterprise tax software and services worldwide.
Vertex helps companies realize the full financial and strategic potential of corporate tax, offering a variety of solutions that streamline, integrate and automate corporate tax processes. Vertex solutions serve multinational corporations in every major line of business tax including; income, sales, consumer use, value added, communications and payroll.
The company's offerings are showcased by Vertex Enterprise, a data-driven, open-architecture approach to tax technology that integrates all direct and indirect tax processes and technologies with host financial system applications on a single platform. The result is increased efficiency, control, transparency and strategic decision making for Tax and Finance departments.
Vertex is a privately held company that employs over 700 professionals across the globe, at its headquarters in the U.S. (Berwyn, Pa.) and offices in Europe (London), Brazil (São Paulo), Dallas, Fort Collins, Naperville, Phoenix and Sarasota. For more information, visit www.vertexinc.com or www.vertexinc.com/enterprise
SOURCE: Vertex Inc.