Everything you want
to know before you say yes.

We work exclusively with e-commerce brands that have 500 or more active SKUs and are using Avalara or TaxJar as their primary sales tax compliance platform. We focus on brands selling physical goods — particularly in categories with nuanced state-by-state tax rules, such as apparel, health and wellness, food and beverage, supplements, beauty, and home goods.

We don't work with service businesses, software companies, or brands that are pre-revenue or operating in a single state. The complexity of multi-state physical goods tax is where our engine generates the most value.

The minimum threshold is 500 active SKUs. Below that, the audit economics are typically too thin to justify the engagement on both sides. Above 500, the complexity starts to stack — more SKUs means more classification decisions, more potential mismatches, and more recoverable dollars.

That said, some of our most impactful audits have been on brands with under 1,000 SKUs in high-complexity categories like dietary supplements or specialty food, where a relatively small number of products can carry significant tax nuance.

Recovery potential scales with the number of nexus states, but even brands with 5–8 active nexus states can carry significant misclassification errors — especially in states like California, Texas, New York, and Florida, which have complex and frequently updated tax codes.

If you have 500+ SKUs and nexus in any combination of high-complexity states, the audit is worth running. It costs you nothing to find out.

Currently our audit engine is purpose-built for Avalara and TaxJar integrations. These two platforms account for the vast majority of e-commerce tax compliance infrastructure, and our API connectors are optimized for their data structures.

If you're using a different platform, reach out directly — we evaluate non-standard integrations case by case and may be able to accommodate your setup depending on the platform and data export capabilities.

Not at all — in fact, this is one of the best times to audit. The most common source of classification errors is the initial onboarding configuration, when product codes are assigned quickly and broadly. Catching those errors at six months means you're stopping the accumulation early rather than discovering a multi-year overpayment later.

The recoverable amount may be smaller, but the forward-looking value of getting your classifications right immediately is significant.

Your involvement is minimal by design. After you submit your information, we schedule a brief 30-minute onboarding call to understand your catalog and confirm integration details. You then grant read-only API access to your Avalara or TaxJar account — a process that takes roughly 15 minutes.

After that, we go to work. You'll receive a progress update midway through the audit, and then your full savings report at completion — typically within 7–14 days. From there, you review the findings and decide whether to move forward with implementation.

For most brands with 500–5,000 SKUs, the audit completes within 7–10 business days of API connection. Larger catalogs (5,000–15,000 SKUs) typically take 10–14 days. Exceptionally complex situations — brands with 15,000+ SKUs, unusual product categories, or highly fragmented nexus configurations — may take up to 21 days.

We don't rush the audit to hit a timeline. Every SKU gets a full classification pass. We'd rather take 15 days and find everything than take 7 and miss something significant.

No. During the audit phase, we operate with read-only access. We read your data — we don't touch it. Your Avalara or TaxJar configuration, your rate tables, your product codes, and your remittance schedule are completely undisturbed.

Nothing changes in your tax operations until you've reviewed the savings report, agreed to the findings, and signed off on an implementation plan. You are in control of the timing and scope of every change we make.

Our standard lookback window is three years — the typical statute of limitations for sales tax refund claims in most states. We ingest and analyze your full transaction history for this period, cross-referencing every classification decision against the authoritative rate and code for that jurisdiction on that transaction date.

For brands with shorter operating histories, we audit the full available history. For brands with longer histories, we can extend the lookback window in states where the statute of limitations allows for it.

We ingest your transaction-level tax data from Avalara or TaxJar: transaction IDs, transaction dates, SKU identifiers, product tax codes applied, jurisdictions, tax amounts remitted, and customer addresses (for jurisdiction validation). We do not access customer names, payment information, order contents, or any data beyond what's needed for the tax audit.

We never access your Shopify or WooCommerce backend, your banking or payment data, or any systems beyond your designated tax compliance platform.

Your data is processed exclusively within our SOC 2 Type II certified audit environment. Data in transit is encrypted via TLS 1.3. Data at rest is encrypted with AES-256. Access to your data within our team is restricted to the audit personnel assigned to your engagement — under strict internal access controls and logged audit trails.

We do not share, sell, or expose your data to third parties. We do not use your transaction data for any purpose beyond your audit. Your data is purged from our systems within 30 days of audit completion, and we provide written confirmation of deletion upon request.

Yes, at any time and for any reason. You can revoke the API token directly within your Avalara or TaxJar account settings — this instantly terminates our access, with no action required from us. You don't need to notify us in advance or provide a reason.

If you revoke access mid-audit, we'll stop work immediately and let you know what we had found up to that point at no charge.

No. Everything we need for the audit exists within Avalara or TaxJar. Your e-commerce platform, order management system, ERP, or any other backend systems are not required and will not be accessed.

In some cases, if our findings identify product-specific attributes that need verification (for example, confirming an ingredient list for a supplement classification), we may ask you to share a product spec sheet. But this is always a direct share — not a system access request.

The savings report is a structured document that contains: an executive summary with total recoverable savings, a finding-by-finding breakdown organized by error type, SKU-level detail for every misclassified product, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction documentation, the statutory citations that support each reclassification, and a prioritized implementation roadmap ranked by dollar value.

Every number in the report is traceable to a specific transaction and a specific jurisdiction ruling. Your CFO, your tax counsel, or your board can review and challenge any finding. We design the report to be independently verifiable — not a black box.

You review every finding before we implement anything. If you disagree with a particular reclassification — for business reasons, based on your own legal counsel's opinion, or for any other reason — you can exclude it from the implementation scope. We only implement what you approve.

Our fee is based on the savings from the findings you choose to implement, not the full value of the report. If you exclude findings, those savings are removed from the fee calculation accordingly.

We only recommend recoveries that are defensible under the statutory language and case precedent in the relevant jurisdiction. Every reclassification we recommend comes with a citation to the specific state statute, administrative code, or regulatory ruling that supports it.

We do not operate in gray areas or aggressive positions. Our philosophy is: if we wouldn't be comfortable defending this finding in front of a state revenue auditor, we don't put it in the report. Recovery without exposure is the only kind we pursue.

Yes. If the audit finds no recoverable savings, you receive a clean bill of health — a summary report confirming that your classifications, exemptions, and jurisdiction rates are accurate and that no material over-remittance was detected. This has value in itself: it's documented confirmation that your tax engine is working correctly.

You also pay nothing. No fee, no consultation charge, no retainer. We absorb the cost of the audit entirely.

Our fee is 20–25% of the documented first-year savings we identify and implement. "First-year savings" means the annualized value of the corrections we make — the amount you would have over-remitted in the next 12 months if those errors had gone uncorrected.

The fee is invoiced after implementation is complete and the savings are documented — not upfront, not at report delivery. The exact percentage within the 20–25% range is based on catalog complexity and determined at onboarding.

No. The audit is free. The savings report is free. The review call is free. The integration is free. If we find nothing, everything is free. The only fee is the performance percentage on savings we actually implement — and only after implementation is complete.

There are no setup fees, no retainers, no hourly charges, no platform subscriptions, and no "minimum engagement" requirements.

The performance fee covers: the full audit and savings report, the implementation of all approved findings in your tax platform, coordination of any applicable amended return filings, a dedicated recovery strategist for the duration of the engagement, 12 months of ongoing jurisdiction drift monitoring, and quarterly micro-audit check-ins to catch any new drift before it accumulates.

After year one, ongoing monitoring is available as a separate retainer arrangement. Most clients find the quarterly micro-audits pay for themselves well within the first quarter.

The invoice is issued after implementation is complete and both parties have confirmed the savings documentation. We do not invoice at report delivery — only after the corrections are in place and the savings are live.

Standard payment terms are net-30 from invoice date. For larger engagements, we can accommodate milestone-based payment schedules if preferred.

Recovery scales with catalog size, transaction volume, number of nexus states, and product category complexity. Our benchmarks across completed audits:

These are averages across audits where savings were found. The brand category matters significantly — supplement and food brands tend toward the higher end; electronics and general merchandise toward the lower end.

Across all completed audits, 94% have found at least $10,000 in recoverable savings. That's not a guarantee — it's a track record. The 6% of audits that found nothing were typically brands with very small catalogs, single-state nexus, or unusually simple product classifications.

For brands that fit our target profile — 500+ SKUs, multi-state nexus, physical goods with category nuance — the probability of finding meaningful savings is very high. But we won't tell you we're certain until we've looked.

This is the most common question we get — and it has a consistent answer. Finance teams reviewing Avalara are typically checking for compliance: are returns being filed on time, are there any outstanding notices, is the platform configured. They're not doing a line-by-line SKU classification audit against every jurisdiction's statutory definitions.

The knowledge required to identify that a specific supplement SKU qualifies as "OTC medicine" in 9 particular states — and not the other 41 — is extremely specialized. No generalist finance team maintains that depth across 13,000+ jurisdictions. We do nothing else. That focus is the entire advantage.

Implementation involves three components: (1) correcting the product tax codes within your Avalara or TaxJar configuration so that future transactions are classified correctly going forward, (2) coordinating amended return filings to recover historical over-remittances from the states that allow refund claims, and (3) updating any exemption certificates or registrations required to support the new classifications.

We handle the complexity of all three components. Your involvement is typically limited to approving the implementation plan, providing any business-specific documentation we need to support the filings, and confirming corrections once complete.

Historical over-remittances are recovered through amended sales tax return filings. Most states allow refund claims for over-payments within a 3-year lookback window. We identify which states allow refund claims, prepare the amended return documentation, and coordinate the filing process with you.

The timeline for receiving refunds varies by state — typically 60–180 days from filing. Some states issue credits against future remittances rather than cash refunds; in those cases, you'll see the savings reflected in reduced future tax obligations.

Filing amended returns does place your brand on a state's radar, which is why we are meticulous about filing only defensible, well-documented positions. Every amended return we prepare comes with full statutory documentation. If a state questions a reclassification, we have the citation ready.

In our experience, well-documented amended returns for legitimate reclassifications are processed without incident. States are focused on under-remittance and non-filers — not brands proactively correcting over-payments with statutory backing.

The first 12 months includes continuous monitoring of jurisdiction rate changes, boundary redraws, and new exemption rulings across all your active nexus states. If a rate change or boundary update creates a new discrepancy in your platform, we flag it before it accumulates.

We also run a quarterly micro-audit — a lightweight pass over your most recent 90 days of transactions to confirm that new SKUs added to your catalog are being classified correctly, and that no new drift has emerged in existing classifications.

After year one, we offer an ongoing monitoring retainer at a flat annual fee. The retainer covers continuous drift monitoring, quarterly micro-audits, new SKU classification reviews, and access to your dedicated recovery strategist for questions and spot checks.

You can also choose to run a full annual audit each year on the same performance-only basis — paying only if we find new recoverable savings. Many clients do both: retainer for ongoing monitoring, plus an annual audit pass that often pays for the retainer and then some.

This is exactly what the ongoing monitoring is designed to address. For clients on the monitoring retainer, new SKU batches can be submitted for classification review before they go live — stopping errors before they're baked into your system rather than discovering them 18 months later.

We can also work with your product team to establish classification protocols — a lightweight internal guide for how to assign Avalara or TaxJar codes to new products in a way that minimizes future misclassification risk. This isn't a formal consulting engagement; it's a practical reference document we build from your catalog's specific patterns.