How to Build a Sales Tax Function That Won’t Crack Under Pressure

As your business grows, having a strong sales tax function is as important as having a strong foundation in a building. It must be solid, regularly inspected, and well-maintained, as the integrity of your operation depends on it. This foundation must withstand various external pressures, from rapid growth and evolving business models to mergers and acquisitions. The addition of aggressive scrutiny from state tax authorities only increases the need for continual maintenance, as even minor missteps can trigger audits, penalties, and reputational risk. 

That’s why it’s essential to have clearly defined goals, robust documentation, and efficient processes — so when pressure hits, your foundation holds firm. 

Laying the Groundwork: Core Responsibilities and Collaboration

As your business scales, so does your exposure to risk. What once ran smoothly with a spreadsheet and a single staff member can quickly unravel as transaction volumes grow and operations expand across jurisdictions. Monitoring nexus, managing exemption certificates, filing returns, and tracking tax payments aren’t just tasks, they are the operational backbone of your compliance efforts. If these aren’t well-managed or documented, you’re building on unstable ground. 

But compliance can’t live in a silo. These responsibilities affect nearly every department. To build something sustainable, you need team alignment across the business. That begins with an explicit tax strategy and setting realistic, actionable goals for your tax function and team members. These goals should reflect current capacity while anticipating future complexity. Start with a discovery session and bring together representatives from finance, legal, IT, and operations. Clarify roles, flag gaps, and establish shared expectations. These early conversations set the tone for future collaboration and reduce friction later on. 

Strong partnerships turn the sales tax function into a shared responsibility, so it’s important to maintain these lines of communication between key stakeholders. Regular touchpoints, whether through shared documentation platforms, recurring syncs, or cross-functional working groups, ensure that tax is built into business processes from the beginning, not added as a last-minute fix. When other departments see how the tax team helps prevent issues rather than just react to them, you gain internal advocates. 

Don’t build your foundation alone. The Sales Tax Institute provides expert guidance, peer support, and resources to help businesses like yours scale responsibly. Sign up for our upcoming webinar and start laying the groundwork for a smarter, more sustainable tax strategy. 

Building the Framework: Departmental Integration and Training

With the groundwork laid, your next focus is embedding the tax function within your organizational structure. Sales tax touches more corners of the business than most people realize. Departments like Accounts Payable, Procurement, Accounts Receivable, and Customer Service all play a role in staying compliant, but only if they’re looped in and properly trained. 

Integration means weaving tax checkpoints into everyday processes. AP teams should verify tax charges or exemptions on vendor invoices. Procurement needs to flag purchases that trigger the need for exemption certificates or require use tax accruals. AR teams must invoice accurately and collect valid exemption certificates. Customer service teams need to understand how tax calculations impact billing and refunds so they can succinctly answer both internal and external inquiries. Without standardized procedures, it’s easy for small mistakes to become costly liabilities, especially if you are ever subject to an audit. 

This level of cross-functional awareness requires ongoing training, not just for the tax team but for every department involved. One-size-fits-all training won’t be effective. Your AR staff don’t need the same information as procurement or marketing. Tailor the content, use real-world examples, and make sessions digestible. Whether it’s a live workshop, a short video series, or department-specific FAQs, training should feel relevant and immediately applicable. 

Even the most robust systems degrade over time. People leave, tools change, and business models evolve. Ongoing training helps protect your foundation from slow decay. Build training resources that are accessible and repeatable, such as manuals, onboarding guides, and certification programs. Assign someone to keep these materials up to date as rules and regulations evolve. 

And don’t stop at delivery of the training. Track who’s been trained, assess the effectiveness, and gather feedback to improve your approach. Tie performance metrics to training outcomes where possible. Creating mentorship programs between tax veterans and newer team members can deepen knowledge. These programs have the added bonus of strengthening internal relationships. 

Training is not just an event. It is a safeguard. And it is one of the most scalable ways to boost accuracy across the board. 

Strengthening the Structure: When to Bring in Reinforcements

Even with strong internal processes and team alignment, there comes a point where internal resources cannot carry the full load. That is when it is time to consider bringing in external support. 

Outsourcing does not mean giving up control. It means freeing up internal resources to focus on strategy while delegating specialized or time-consuming tasks to experts. You may need a tax technology consultant to integrate compliance software with your ERP. Or perhaps you need a partner to assess your nexus footprint or manage complex multi-state return filings. Knowing when to bring in external help and how to choose the right partner can be the key to maintaining control and gaining efficiency. 

This is also where innovations like Artificial Intelligence enter the picture. AI is a master at collecting and analyzing data, which is a time consuming task for humans to handle. This technology has made leaps and bounds in recent years and can help with everything from gathering nexus information and taxability mapping to exemption management and reverse audits. However, this doesn’t mean that you can set up an AI function and forget about it. Human intervention is still necessary to validate the information, so make sure you have a clear company process in place for how to use this technology.  

External partnerships with the support of technology can ease the burden on your in-house team, introduce new efficiencies, and help you stay ahead of regulatory changes. They also provide flexibility during transitions or periods of rapid growth. 

A Sustainable Sales Tax Function is Foundational for Success

Scaling your sales tax function isn’t about doing everything at once. It’s about building intentionally, using what you have now while planning for what you’ll need next. Whether you are expanding into new states, launching a new product line, or preparing for an ERP migration, your tax foundation needs to be strong enough to support growth and flexible enough to evolve alongside it. 

That means setting realistic goals based on your current resources. Maybe your documentation isn’t perfect yet, but you can start by creating a central hub for tax policies. Maybe your departments aren’t all trained, but you can begin by prioritizing the highest-risk areas. Progress in sales tax compliance is measured in milestones, not massive leaps. 

Technology plays a big role in this. The right platforms can automate filings, track nexus thresholds, and store exemption certificates at scale, but only if you choose solutions that fit your specific needs and integrate well with your other systems. And of course, the right team makes all the difference. Hiring strategically, upskilling your current staff, and knowing when to bring in external support will all shape how well your tax function holds up under pressure.