No wonder it seems like you have to keep running to stay ahead of all the tax changes thrown at Accounting pros: In sales and use taxes alone, there were 739 rate changes last year. Not to mention all the “reinterpretations” of the rules and definitions that states like to introduce that wind up making more products — and services — taxable. That’s according to the newest research from Vertex.

Here’s what changed, and how you can make sure you stay in compliance.

As expected, most of the changes, 512, were at the city level. Of those, 304 and were rate hikes and another 178 were newly imposed taxes. (The rest were decreases in the tax rate.) Counties were responsible for 146 rate changes, 19 of which were newly imposed taxes.

Just because the bulk of the rate changes affects only a small local area that doesn’t mean you won’t have quite a few rate changes to track. After all, the changes are coming at a rate of about three per workday. Some of them are going to take effect in areas you do business in.

And because the majority of the changes are increases or new taxes, an error on your part means you’ll likely have to pay additional penalties and interest.

Taking the time now to fine-tune your internal controls can help you avoid the majority of sales tax errors other companies make.

For starters, make sure you know where you need to watch for more changes. A standard sales tax matrix, listing all the cities and counties where you do business is a crucial start.

Better yet, tie that data into your master vendor file so that if you catch wind of a rate change in a particular county, you can flag all your vendors to whom the new rate applies. Then, when they send invoices, you can tell in a snap if they’ve applied the rates correctly to your transaction.

Tags: Best practices, Internal controls, Sales tax, Tax compliance