AWS for Software Companies Podcast Ep195: Tax Compliance at Scale: How Avalara Is Rewriting the Rules with AI and AWS
Feb 24, 2026
Tim Diekmann, SVP of Engineering and Chief Architect at Avalara, leads technical strategy for global tax compliance. He discusses using AI to parse unstructured tax notices, automate ERP mapping, enable conversational GenAI reporting over billions of transactions, and embed agentic assistants into customer workflows. He also covers Avalara’s use of AWS and co-selling to scale across 40,000 jurisdictions.
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Tax Compliance Spans 40,000 Jurisdictions
- Avalara operates between commerce and government, covering registration, sales tax calculation, certificate management, and returns across 40,000+ jurisdictions.
- They support VAT, cross-border duty, and e-invoicing globally, extending beyond indirect tax into property tax and direct taxes.
Human Experts Plus AI For Regulatory Content
- Avalara uses content researchers to ingest tax regulations from varied sources like websites, pamphlets, speeches, and tweets.
- Those experts translate rules into automated content, and AI now monitors and onboards new regulatory content dynamically.
Use AI To Parse Documents Not To Decide Compliance
- Use AI for extracting structured data from unstructured tax documents but not for final legal compliance answers.
- Apply rigorous rules for compliance outputs while using AI to parse notices, publications, and registration documents automatically.