September and October 2025 Roundup: Tax laws you need to know

This roundup highlights new tax rules, policy shifts, and compliance alerts that may affect your business.

• Effective October 1, 2025, Florida eliminated the sales tax on commercial leases, Washington started taxing numerous business activities, and more than a dozen states implemented sales tax rate changes.
• Tariff and trade policies remain in flux, and electronic invoicing mandates are spreading.
• Avalara is transforming tax compliance with Agentic Tax and Compliance™.

Change is (still) constant. In addition to the sales and use tax rate changes that took effect in more than a dozen states on October 1, 2025, notable October 2025 sales tax changes include the elimination of the Florida sales tax on commercial leases and Washington state’s new sales tax on various business activities.

No more rewards for good deeds. Effective January 1, 2026, Colorado is eliminating its sales tax vendor fee that compensates vendors for collecting and remitting sales tax on behalf of the state.  

A new tax holiday for holiday shoppers. Sitka, Alaska, is kicking off the holiday shopping season with a new sales tax holiday. The tax-free period starts on Black Friday, November 28, 2025, and concludes the following day.

No rest for the weary. Tariff and trade policies remain in flux. In September, the White House modified reciprocal tariffs, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to the tariffs implemented under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. In October, U.S.-Canada relations cooled and U.S.-China relations warmed.

If not now, when? More than 60 countries currently require electronic invoicing or are in the process of implementing a mandate. Though there’s no e-invoicing mandate in the United States, U.S. companies must comply with global requirements as applicable. Step one is understanding what e-invoicing is. Step two may be trying it out: Avalara now offers U.S. customers free domestic e-invoicing services through our certified Digital Business Networks Alliance access point.

Speaking of e-invoicing... Discover how Avalara and Zuora are using automation and expert-backed AI to help global finance teams fulfill e-invoicing mandates. With a single integration, businesses get global coverage from day one without custom middleware or fragmented tools. Find out how in this blog post.

The future is here. Avalara is transforming tax compliance with Agentic Tax and Compliance™. Leveraging decades of tax expertise, our AI agents execute real-time compliance tasks where business happens — in the browser, ecommerce platform, email, ERP, or financial billing system.

A helping hand. Avi for Tax Research, Avalara’s AI-powered research assistant, is helping users find information about trade and tariff changes in Avalara Tax Research. If you use Avalara Tax Research, discover how Avi for Tax Research can help you.

Keeping that core clean. Clean core — running nondifferentiated business functions such as payroll, invoicing, and tax compliance on SAP standardized processes and APIs — is the foundation that makes AI adoption meaningful and scalable within your SAP suite. Find out why clean core matters in the age of AI.

Broader, faster, improved. The latest version of the Avalara app for Stripe Billing and Stripe Checkout delivers faster performance, broader object support, simplified invoice handling, and enhanced tax visibility. Learn more in this blog post.

Simplify and scale. A trusted Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner, Avalara is now available in AWS Marketplace — giving AWS-native companies faster access to automated, scalable tax solutions.

Always on. When a major cloud provider experienced a significant outage on October 20, Avalara customers stayed online and operational.

New beginnings. Find out how one online auto seller transformed its compliance program after system breakdowns caused a state to suspend its dealer license.

Keep your finger on the pulse of tax rule changes and tax compliance technology at the Avalara Tax Desk.