State sales-tax registrations

Problem:

A 2018 Supreme Court decision found that a state can collect sales tax from any company that does business there, even if they don’t have a physical presence in the state. 

This means that businesses who sell goods or services online have to register to collect sales tax in any state where their sales activity exceeds certain thresholds. These thresholds vary by state, keeping track of them is cumbersome, and state tax authorities can levy fines and penalties against businesses that don’t comply. 

Solution:

We created a guided flow to help businesses determine where they should register to collect sales tax. By reducing a complex process to a few clear steps, this flow helps customers feel knowledgeable and in control.

Discovery and research

As with any online shopping experience, there were various entry points to this flow. We diagrammed each one and brainstormed the order in which the pages might appear.

When a business uses Avalara for tax calculation, it gives Avalara access to its sales data. Based on this data, we knew when a business had surpassed the level of sales activity that would require it to register in a state. We could also tell when a customer’s sales were growing quickly and might require them to register soon.

Grouping state registrations this way—exceeding and approaching—was the main organizational principle for this project. It also mirrors the way that state sales activity is represented on a map of the U.S. elsewhere in the product; some customers would be reaching this flow from the map, so it was important that both align conceptually.

The work

The outcome

This project was about to launch just as I left the company, so I don’t have quantitative data on its performance. But because it was based on the same template as our successful tax-compliance questionnaire, I’m optimistic. It also exemplifies how to leverage common content components and design system attributes to build cohesive experiences.