Tax automation solutions provider Avalara has acquired Seattle startup Indix, which makes artificial intelligence technology, highlighting the growing importance of AI in the tax and accounting software space, as it develops to a point where it can be applied in specific and useful ways.
This acquisition comes hot on the heels of Avalara’s purchase of Compli, which provides alcohol industry compliance services. Terms of the Indix deal were not disclosed.
Avalara intends to use the Indix AI to maintain and expand its tax content database, which includes international product codes and classifications, taxability rules, exemption conditions, tax holidays, jurisdictions, boundaries, tax rates, thresholds, registration, compliance, and return preparation and filing requirements. According to Avalara, maintaining tax content and global product information is difficult and resource-intensive, requiring specialized technology, expertise, and human resources. Collecting new content and tracking changes can be a highly manual process — by applying Indix’s AI to this problem, Avalara believes it will be able to automate the aggregation and accurate maintenance of its tax content.
“Global taxing authorities govern compliance through ever-changing rules and requirements, and the task of gathering and maintaining this data is core to the value Avalara provides,” said Scott McFarlane, co-founder and CEO of Avalara, in a statement. “We believe the combination of deep product knowledge, broad product content, and artificial intelligence technology will allow us to provide our customers the information they want and need to factor compliance into their business decision-making, and for Avalara to address more compliance requirements to support their growth.”
“Avalara and Indix share a similar global vision,” added Sanjay Parthasarathy, CEO of Indix. “From Day One, we built Indix to collect, organize, and structure the world’s product information using artificial intelligence. With the addition of the Indix expertise, Avalara will be able to efficiently and rapidly refine its content to meet the expanding and evolving needs of its customers.”
