Avalara Expands in Brazil
Catapults to SaaS Leadership for Transactional Tax Compliance Automation
Seattle, WA – September 27, 2016 – Avalara, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based tax compliance automation for businesses of all sizes, today announced a significant expansion of its operations and strategic initiatives in Brazil. Through acquisition and organic growth, the company has increased its Brazilian leadership team and customer base, and extended its product offering, becoming the first full-service SaaS provider to cover all tax compliance requirements for companies conducting business in Brazil.
Brazil leads the world in tax compliance complexity and governmental reporting requirements. According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers[1], the annual tax compliance burden for doing business in Brazil is approximately 2,600 hours – more than eight times greater than for the United States or European Union. Taxation rules in Brazil involve multiple taxes and tax types, numerous taxing jurisdictions and authorities, and constant changes in rates, rules, and other requirements. In addition, companies in Brazil are required to upload digital records of every transaction to a government system provided by the Brazilian Federal Tax Authority. The process for reporting this information is referred to as SPED (Sistema Publico de Escrituracao Digital or Public System of Digital Accounting). With this announcement, Avalara Brazil leads the way in easing the tax compliance burden for Brazilian companies and international firms seeking to do business there.
“Avalara is delighted to grow our presence in Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America and the ninth largest in the world,” said Scott McFarlane, Avalara co-founder and chief executive officer. “Today’s news affirms our commitment to global expansion into one of the Top 10 economies in the world, and a market with enormous unmet need. We now have an excellent leadership team in place, and we look forward to serving the millions of companies doing business in Brazil by helping them automate the burden of transactional tax compliance.”
Avalara has named Rodrigo Zerlotti as general manager, Latin America, and Carlos “Kazuo” Tomomitsu as general manager, Brazil. Zerlotti has more than 25 years of technology and tax experience, including 15 years in Brazil as founder and CEO of SuitePlus, responsible for the ERP localization of Netsuite; and founder of Rezolve, a cloud technology company. In the US, he held senior technology roles at University of Texas - Austin, Radian International, and other Austin-based hi-tech startups. Zerlotti will lead Avalara’s expansion into Latin America.
Kazuo has more than 30 years of experience in finance and tax automation. Before founding his own tax technology company, Keeptrue, he led the business application division of Sonda IT, one of Brazil’s largest systems integrators, where he directed the first SAP localization project in Brazil. Kazuo will direct Avalara Brazil’s product, marketing, sales and support activities for a growing list of more than 400 customers.
Avalara Brazil offers a cloud-based software platform and professional services to enhance governance, minimize tax risk, automate fiscal operations and ensure correct compliance in Brazil. Avalara Brazil unites transactional tax calculation, electronic documents generation, tax content, audit, monitoring and compliance, electronic data interchange (EDI), tools and verification for electronic reporting to Brazilian tax authorities (SPED), and business process outsourcing (BPO) from the former SPL Fiscal, Keeptrue, TaxVision and SuitePlus brands. This expansion further augments Avalara’s 2015 acquisition of the SuitePlus tax. Together, this offering spans the range of tax compliance requirements for the Brazilian market and will be integrated into Avalara’s global Compliance Cloud™ platform.
About Avalara
Avalara helps businesses of all sizes achieve compliance with transactional taxes, including VAT, sales and use, excise, communications, and other tax types. We deliver comprehensive, automated, cloud-based solutions that are fast, accurate, and easy to use. Our Compliance Cloud™ platform helps customers manage complicated and burdensome tax compliance obligations imposed by state, local, and other taxing authorities throughout the world.
Avalara offers more than 500 hundred pre-built connectors into leading accounting, ERP, ecommerce and other business applications. Each year, the company processes billions of indirect tax transactions for customers and users, files hundreds of thousands of tax compliance documents and tax returns, and manages millions of exemption certificates and other compliance related documents.
A privately held company, Avalara’ s venture capital investors include Sageview Capital, Battery Ventures, Warburg Pincus, Technology Crossover Ventures, Arthur Ventures, and other institutional and individual investors. Avalara’s headquarters are in Seattle, WA and it has offices across the U.S. and in London and Brighton, UK; Brussels, Belgium; São Paulo, Brazil; and Pune, India. More information at: www.avalara.com
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