How Retailers and their Tax Groups are Gaining an Edge

The retail landscape never holds still. New channels, new fees, new markets, and constantly shifting tax rules create real pressure on retail tax teams. This white paper, developed with DuCharme, McMillen & Associates (DMA), breaks down how edge-equipped tax automation helps tax groups stay ahead, without making painful tradeoffs between performance, scalability, and cost.

Why tax compliance is a retail growth driver

Tax accuracy touches every part of the customer experience. Inconsistent calculations across sales channels erode customer trust. Delays in payment processing slow launches. And as retailers expand into new geographies and product lines, manual tax processes simply cannot keep pace. Getting tax right, quickly and consistently, is not just a compliance issue. It is a competitive one.

The compliance challenges retail tax teams face

Retail tax groups are navigating record volumes of U.S. sales tax rate changes, new local fees (environmental, delivery, entertainment), evolving marketplace facilitator rules, and expanding e-invoicing requirements in the EU and beyond. Every new channel or business model adds another layer of complexity. The right technology stack should absorb that complexity, not add to it.

How edge computing changes the equation

Edge computing moves tax calculation closer to the point of sale: whether that is an e-commerce checkout, a physical store register, or a mobile transaction. Vertex O Series Edge delivers self-updating endpoints, packaged deployment, and centralized endpoint maintenance, so your tax engine stays consistent across every sales channel. Key benefits include offline resiliency that keeps checkout lines moving during connectivity disruptions, high-performance e-commerce processing that scales during peak traffic, centralized configuration and reporting across all local tax engines, and enhanced security at every endpoint.

Reducing IT burden while improving outcomes

Most of these edge capabilities do double duty. They improve tax accuracy and reduce the IT time required to support and maintain the solution. Retailers no longer need their own orchestration tools, and updates from the tax department reach production checkout on time, wherever tax needs to be calculated.

Built for the retail tax team of tomorrow

As physical and digital channels continue to converge, tax compliance must be accurate, fast, flexible, and scalable. Edge computing makes that possible. For retail tax groups, the mission stays the same: support every transaction, in every channel, wherever and whenever it happens.