SpeedTax — SpeedTax Core, Plus & Pro

Automated sales and use tax systems generally require guided initial installation to ensure that the system is properly integrated and mapped with various components of the business’ sales and accounting programs. But once the installation is in place, users have very little interaction with the system on a day-to-day basis, with the program automatically finding and calculating the appropriate rates as sales or estimates are being prepared and instantly inserting them into the transactions.

The primary direct user interaction with the system is during generation, review and filing of forms, for which the SpeedTax system provides an intuitive interface with full user-level access controls, plus the ability to set team collaboration and approval processes. These processes can alert users by email of due dates or of returns needing review, corrections, sign-off or other pending tasks.

The back-end of the system is web-based, pulling sales tax data, as needed, from the SpeedTax servers, so the system natively supports remote locations. The CPA/Accountant version of the Plus forms preparation system can support multiple business entities for non-automated period-end filing tasks, but the automated Core system is designed to work with only one business entity per installation. As another benefit of the back-end of SpeedTax being web-based, users with access rights can view and edit returns and access reports while working remotely or via full-web mobile devices, although no specific mobile applications have been developed for the system. 4.25

Compliance Capabilities

SpeedTax provides rates for more than 14,000 sales taxing jurisdictions in North America, including all states, counties, cities and special districts in the United States, with support for Canadian PST, GST, and HST coming online during 2010. The system uses customer addresses to determine nexus rules, plus rate, special tax rules or holidays and other potential issues, and automatically assigns the rate to transactions in real-time. Automated due-date calendaring functions keep track of the reporting requirements for all of the jurisdictions and alert managers or other users to deadlines, allowing the user to quickly generate reports that are automatically populated with the system data. Review and filing processes are accessed from the secure Management Console, which gives quick access to all key tasks.

Once forms are approved, they can be quickly generated into an interactive PDF format for each jurisdiction and either mailed or filed online through a state’s sales tax website. The system doesn’t have built-in electronic filing and payment capabilities, but SpeedTax does offer an optional filing service, through which the company manages all of the return generation, filing and payment remittances.