Scenario 2: Customers without access to Avalara

If your business subscribes only to the Avalara 1099 and W-9 APIs and doesn’t have access to the Avalara.com by default, additional activation steps are required:

Step 1: Contact Customer Support

Contact Avalara 1099 Customer Support to request API access.
Avalara will then send an email to the Account Owner containing a link to set a password and activate their Avalara.com account.

Note

Steps 2 to 4 only need to be completed once to create a license key. After generating the license key, use it in all future calls to renew the bearer token.

Step 2: Accept Terms & Conditions

After setting your password, you’ll need to use your email address and password as Basic Auth credentials to activate your account and accept Avalara’s Terms & Conditions.

To activate your Avalara account, execute the followingcurl command:

curl -X POST \
  'https://rest.avatax.com/api/v2/accounts/{accountId}/activate' \
  -H 'accept: application/json' \
  -H 'authorization: Basic {base64Encoded(email:password)}' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json-patch+json' \
  -d '{ 
        "acceptAvalaraTermsAndConditions": true, 
        "haveReadAvalaraTermsAndConditions": true 
      }'

Be sure to replace{base64Encoded(email:password)} with your actual Base64 encoded credentials, and{accountId} with your actual account ID. This command will send a request to activate your account while confirming that you have accepted and read the Avalara Terms and Conditions.

Step 3: Retrieve Account ID

To obtain account information from the Avalara API, you can execute the followingcurlcommand:

curl -X GET \
  'https://rest.avatax.com/api/v2/accounts' \
  -H 'accept: application/json' \
  -H 'authorization: Basic {base64Encoded(email:password)}'

This command issues a GET request to retrieve account details.

Step 4: Create a License Key

To create a license key, use the followingcurlcommand:

curl -X POST \
  'https://rest.avatax.com/api/v2/accounts/{accountId}/licensekey' \
  -H 'accept: application/json' \
  -H 'authorization: Basic {base64Encoded(email:password)}' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json-patch+json' \
  -d '{
    "name": "{{licenseKeyName}}",
    "accountId": "{{accountId}}"
  }'

Be sure to replace{{licenseKeyName}} with a proper name for your license key,{{accountId}} with your actual account ID.

Step 5: Generate Bearer Token

With your Account ID and License Key ready, you can now request a bearer token:

curl -X POST 'https://identity.avalara.com/connect/token' \
   --header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
   --data-urlencode 'grant_type=client_credentials' \
   --data-urlencode 'client_id={{accountId}}' \
   --data-urlencode 'client_secret={{licenseKey}}' \
   --data-urlencode 'scope=avatax_api'

This command sends a POST request to the Avalara identity server, including the necessary headers and data to authenticate using client credentials. Be sure to replace{{accountId}} and{{licenseKey}} with your actual account ID and license key.