Avalara Partners with Shopify to Solve Duty and Import Taxes for Merchants

Global sales are increasing rapidly as more consumers shop online, and more businesses take advantage of the ease of selling products online. Shopify merchants generated $20 billion in cross-border sales in 2020 alone. To take advantage of the cross-border opportunity, businesses need tools that can help identify, create, and manage international markets with minimal barriers.

When it comes to cross-border compliance, businesses must ensure customs duties and import taxes are accurately calculated at the time of checkout to reduce compliance risks and negative customer experiences caused by surprise costs at the time of delivery. Shopify, a global commerce platform, has developed an end-to-end cross-border product to help its more than 1.7 million merchants grow their businesses internationally.

With Avalara Cross-Border Estimated, a new, patent-pending feature of Avalara AvaTax Cross-Border, natively available in Shopify Markets, merchants can calculate the appropriate duty and import tax fees at checkout, without requiring tariff codes. Avalara Cross-Border Estimated provides merchants a unique way to meet their cross-border business requirements and the flexibility to make decisions on their duty and import tax determinations. Benefits of the services include:

• Improved accuracy of duty and tax estimates: Calculate costs with confidence by leveraging Avalara’s industry-leading artificial intelligence engine and global compliance content database.
• Enhanced checkout experience: Provide customers with landed cost estimates in the cart in real time to reduce unexpected costs at delivery.

“The power and promise of the internet was for businesses to reach customers anywhere, anytime. Ecommerce makes that a reality for buyers and sellers,” said Scott McFarlane, CEO and co-founder at Avalara. “However, cross-border commerce comes with increased compliance complexity that can create risk for merchants. Shopify Markets provides merchants with the automated duty and import tax capabilities of Avalara’s cross-border solutions to streamline the checkout process and provide estimates to customers in cart, minimizing surprise costs, and reducing compliance risk.”

Bolstering HS code classification with the acquisition of 3CE Technologies

Avalara’s cross-border solution makes it easier to sell anywhere in the world by automating the process of identifying and mapping tariff codes to products and by calculating customs duties and import taxes. Through the acquisition of 3CE, Avalara expands its current cross-border compliance offerings by further automating its HS code classification services and self-service capabilities for businesses of all sizes in addition to customers in government and manufacturing.

“Integrating 3CE’s HS code classification engine enables Avalara to further enhance our cross-border solution, which will allow us to make it easier to sell anywhere in the world across new industries and use cases,” said Craig Reed, general manager of cross-border at Avalara.

“This acquisition brings together best-in-class HS classification technology to automate the onerous process of identifying and mapping codes for cross-border transactions. As part of Avalara’s cross-border team, we are committed to removing barriers to global commerce for businesses of all sizes,” said Randy Rotchin, president and CEO of 3CE Technologies.

For additional information about Shopify Markets and duty and import tax, please click here. To learn more about Avalara’s cross-border offerings, please click here.