Closed a California CDTFA field audit in October and a Washington B&O/sales tax desk review in November, and wrapped a Texas Comptroller sampling dispute tied to marketplace facilitator rules. Are ecommerce/SaaS teams planning to bring 2025 audit defense and multistate nexus remediation in-house, or keeping it with firms/contractors? I work primarily with Vertex O Series, Avalara CertCapture, and Colorado home‑rule filings if that context helps.
“CertCapture” only helps if you run a 60-day pre-expiry sweep; moving cert renewal nudges into our CRM dropped WA exposure about 30% and made desk reviews smoother. Are you open to a fractional lead to set that up in-house and tap firms only for field audits?
Keep defense external but bring nexus remediation and data prep in-house; the ROI is faster Vertex O Series change control and cleaner trails. Concrete step: build a monthly audit binder — Vertex rule/change log, marketplace facilitator reconciliation by channel, WA B&O class map, and CDTFA resale tie-outs — and insist on ‘stratified sample or no sample’ in TX. If you can staff a 90‑day lookback cadence in 2025, pull it inside; otherwise leave the auditor-facing work with a firm.
And @OP After your October CDTFA field audit, a simple win is a monthly ‘audit bundle’ job: snapshot Vertex O Series config (product mapping, rules), marketplace flags, and ‘as of’ rate tables to cold storage so WA desk reviews and TX ‘marketplace facilitator rules’ sampling disputes tie out fast — , this saved me twice last year and kept change control sane. If you’re bringing 2025 in-house I can stand this up plus a light nexus matrix in 2–3 weeks; otherwise keep CA appeals external and crib CDTFA’s audit playbook: https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/formspubs/pub76.pdf — contractor or FTE?
@j_morrison23 +1 on config hygiene; I’d add a simple ‘marketplace responsibility matrix’ (effective dates, who collects by state) and tag each order accordingly, then drop a quarterly marketplace-vs-GL reconciliation pack into an immutable folder — think labeling cables before an office move — TX sampling arguments shrink fast when you can hand that over. Are you keeping a tiny nexus change log tied to new SKUs/channels, or is that still tribal knowledge?
I’d keep audits external but name one internal control owner for nexus and exemption certs; build a “pre‑audit data room” (canned order/tax trace exports + cert images) so evidence is a 48‑hour pull — a go‑bag. I’ve got Q1 capacity for desk reviews and sampling disputes if you want a short pilot; are you leaning in-house for 2025?