Success Stories
The clearest way to understand what we do is to see what it looks like when it goes right. Each of these started the way most of our work does, with a company that wasn’t sure how big its problem was, or whether it had one at all. What they have in common isn’t a dramatic rescue. It’s the quieter thing clients tell us they remember: a tangled situation made clear, a liability estimate made smaller, and a decision they could finally make with confidence.
You’ll notice we don’t name the companies in these stories. That’s deliberate. Many of our clients come to us precisely because something is sensitive (exposure they didn’t know about, a problem surfacing in the middle of a deal) and the last thing they need is to see it discussed publicly. So unless a client specifically asks to be named, we don’t. The discretion we bring to our own marketing is the same discretion we bring to your situation.
Correcting a Sales Tax Software Implementation Error Before It Escalated
A rapidly growing international consumer products company put a well-known tax automation platform into its U.S. e-commerce system, and on the surface it worked. Underneath, a configuration error was double-counting transactions in some states and missing taxable sales in others, with returns filed on the flawed data and potential exposure exceeding $200,000. We diagnosed the root causes, filed amended returns across more than fifteen states, and put a forward-looking compliance framework in place, stabilizing the company before the error escalated.
Protecting a Family-Owned Business from $2M in Multi-State Exposure During Sale
As a multi-generational, family-owned manufacturer and equipment lessor prepared to sell, the buyer’s diligence flagged more than $2 million in potential multi-state exposure, tied to both equipment sales and leasing, and it threatened the family’s exit. We looked past the headline number to where liability truly existed, then used voluntary disclosures and penalty abatements to remediate across more than twenty states and bring the company into full compliance before closing. The exposure came down by roughly $1 million, and the sale went through.
Proactive Audit Defense Reduces $1M Assessment by Over 50%
A multi-state electronics distributor tried to handle a California audit on its own for nearly a year and ended up with a proposed assessment over $1 million, much of it driven by the auditor’s sampling method: a handful of disallowed exemption certificates, extrapolated across every sale. We reexamined the sample and the methodology, cleared exemptions that had been improperly disallowed, and challenged how the results were extrapolated. The proposed liability came down by more than $500,000, and the company avoided paying tax it never truly owed.
Protecting a Cross-Border Acquisition from Hidden U.S. Sales Tax Risk
A Europe-based technology group was days from acquiring a fast-growing U.S. software company when diligence surfaced significant multi-state exposure on the target’s SaaS and software revenue, along with rushed pre-sale registrations that had compounded the problem and a successor-liability risk that put the deal’s value in question. Brought in just before closing, we refined the real exposure, separated pre-closing liabilities from what could follow the buyer, and designed a remediation roadmap using voluntary disclosures and corrective filings. The escrow holdback was unlocked, roughly $100,000 was preserved for the sellers, and the acquisition closed without open-ended tax uncertainty hanging over it.
Turning Compliance Chaos into Cost Savings
A Pacific Northwest consumer products company sold both wholesale and direct to consumers, and relied on Avalara plus a local CPA to keep sales tax running. It looked fine on the surface, but bad economic-nexus advice had gone unnoticed for years, and the company had never collected tax from its D2C customers in more than twenty states where it should have, turning a pass-through expense into a corporate liability. Rather than replace the software, we configured it correctly and built a multi-state voluntary disclosure strategy, shortening lookbacks and negotiating penalty relief, and brought the total exposure down by more than $600,000.
Restoring Compliance for a Scaling SaaS Company
A fast-growing Bay Area training company sold on-demand learning through a cloud subscription, and when a new CFO came on, the finance team realized sales tax had been overlooked across several states where that access was taxable. Because the tax had never been collected from customers, years of exposure would have come straight off the company’s balance sheet. We ran a state-by-state analysis, turned a rough internal estimate into a defensible one, and used a coordinated set of voluntary disclosures to limit the lookback years, secure penalty relief, and put a sustainable compliance framework in place for continued national growth.
Your Situation is Probably More Solvable Than it Feels
Almost every one of these started with someone who wasn’t sure how bad the problem was. If that sounds familiar, a short conversation is usually enough to tell you where you actually stand, and, more often than not, that it’s more manageable than it seemed.
