1. Problem & Market Need

Shopify automatically collects sales-tax rates but does NOT:

• tell merchants where they have economic nexus (after Wayfair all states have their own thresholds)
• reconcile ‘collected vs owed’ per jurisdiction
• build/maintain a filing calendar or actually e-file.

SMBs therefore either:

1. Manually export Shopify/Stripe reports → Excel → state portals (time-consuming, error-prone)
2. Pay Avalara ($1–4 k / yr + $25-30 per return), TaxJar ($99–349 / mo) or enlist a CPA.

Reddit & HN comments repeatedly complain these tools are over-priced, opaque and still require lots of manual work. Example posts:

• r/SalesTax – “Avalara quoted me $4,000 just to connect Shopify.” (May 2024)
• r/Shopify – “Any cheaper nexus tracker than TaxJar?” (Mar 2024)
• HN thread “Wayfair ruined small e-commerce” (Dec 2023)—top comments ask for ‘simple automated filing’.

2. Keyword & Search-volume Signals (manual pull from Ahrefs / Keywords Everywhere proxies)