Skip to main content

BNA Sales & Use Tax Rates and Forms

800-424-2938 (option 3)www.BNASoftware.com

From the August 2009 Review of Sales
& Use Tax Programs

BNA
Software, well-known for its tax planning, fixed asset management and corporate
financial applications, also offers two products geared toward sales and use
tax processes. The BNA Sales & Use Tax Rates system is the tax table engine,
providing lookup and, optionally via the Rates Exporter, export of rate information
for all jurisdictions in the United States. The BNA Sales & Use Tax Forms
system handles compliance processes, offering more than 3,400 forms for all
U.S. taxing jurisdictions, as well as exemption certificates, business registrations,
powers of attorney, and other related forms and worksheets. Both systems are
available as either a traditional, CD-based program or as online applications.
The single-user editions of the programs cost $925 each and renew at $710 per
year.

NAVIGATION & DATA ENTRY:
Each of the programs operates separately and each also offers a different user
interface, whether locally installed or using the online versions (we chose
to use the online versions of both programs for this review). The Rates system
with Rates Explorer opens through a web browser into a modern and intuitive
interface that offers four program tabs: Search, Favorites, What’s New,
and Rates Exporter. BNA Sales & Use Tax Rates is primarily geared toward
use as a manual rate lookup system, with the screen defaulting to the Search
tab, which offers a search field with the ability to look for taxing jurisdictions
by ZIP Code, city, county or state, or by all four criteria. The program also
keeps a linked list of recent searches, allowing users to quickly access frequent
searches. As noted, the Favorites tab also offers the ability to permanently
link key searches.

The Rates system does not offer direct integration with any accounting systems
for “live” sales tax rate validation and automated calculation,
but with Rates Explorer it does offer an export function that can be used to
generate rate tables for selected jurisdictions into a specific file format
(Excel, XML, CSV or text) that can then be imported into most sales, e-commerce
and accounting applications. These rate tables can be created on demand, or
can be scheduled to be automatically created weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually,
and on specific days. Since the rates contained in the online program are maintained
by BNA, this method can help ensure that a business utilizes the most recent
rate information for jurisdictions. The sales tax system does not currently
offer taxability rules (such as, “Are services taxed in jurisdiction X?”
or “Is there a back-to-school sales tax holiday in state Y?”).

The BNA Sales & Use Tax Forms system, on the other hand, does not use
a web browser (even when using the online version), and instead uses an interface
that looks and works like an installed program. The interface offers icons for
creating multiple business profiles, working with returns, searching forms and
accessing instructions. When starting a new return, users select the states
and municipalities and then select from a list of forms and reports available
for that jurisdiction. Form replicas automatically calculate, and users can
automatically populate business information. Finished reports are saved locally,
not online.

FILING, ELECTRONIC COMPLIANCE & PAYMENT:
Compliance and reporting functions are housed in the BNA Sales & Use Tax
Forms system, which offers forms, reports and other documents for all states,
cities and special districts with sales tax. The program provides signature-ready
fileable forms that can also be saved into PDF format, but it does not offer
any form of built-in electronic filing or remittance options.

RATE UPDATES:
The online version of the BNA Sales & Use Tax Rates program accesses rate
tables that are maintained and updated on BNA’s servers so that rates
are always up-to-date. For the installed version of the program, monthly updates
are available from the company’s website or on disc.

HELP/TRAINING:
Each of these systems provides various Help features, such as access to filing
information, form instructions, user manuals and tutorials. BNA’s website
offers product-specific tips, FAQs and software updates, along with links to
training options. Technical support is included in program pricing.

RELATIVE VALUE:
Both programs offer good ease-of-use, providing a simple method to look up sales
tax rates, export rate tables into other programs, and prepare compliance returns
for multiple business entities.

2009 OVERALL RATING: