Excise API

The Avalara AvaTax Excise Web Service is a SOAP web service that is the external programmatic interface into the Avalara AvaTax Excise application. It provides for a platform independent mechanism to obtain tax calculation information. This document defines the object structure, and an introduction on how to consume the web service for use in customer programs. At this time, Excise sample code/libraries are available in .NET only. Versioning: The Excise Tax SOAP API currently implements inline explicit versioning. The method name contains the version number. This document describes version 5_18_0, which is NOT is the current version of the service. Please replace this when using newer or older versions of the service. Please note the application name changes effective 7/31/2014:

  • Avalara Returns Excise replaces Zytax Compliance
  • Avalara AvaTax Excise replaces Zytax Determination
  • Avalara Government replaces Zytax Government

URLs

  • Development Authentication Service: https://psd.avalara.net/authenticationservice.asmx?wsdl
  • Development Tax Determination: https://psd.avalara.net/determination/taxdetermination.asmx?wsdl
  • User Acceptance Authentication Service: https://exciseua.avalara.net/authenticationservice.asmx?wsdl
  • User Acceptance Tax Determination: https://exciseua.avalara.net/determination/taxdetermination.asmx?wsdl
  • Production Authentication Service: https://excise.avalara.net/authenticationservice.asmx?wsdl
  • Production Tax Determination: https://excise.avalara.net/determination/taxdetermination.asmx?wsdl

Authentication

The Excise Platform Authentication Web Service is a SOAP/XML web service that is the external programmatic interface for authentication against the Excise Platform. It provides for a platform independent mechanism to obtain an authorization token which can be used when calling other web services. This document defines the object structure, and an introduction on how to consume the web service for use in customer programs. Web service authentication in the Excise platform has 3 basic forms:

  • Anonymous: no authentication required to call a web service
  • Forms: Forms authentication requires calling the AuthenticationService.asmx before calling other web services. This function returns an ASP.Net Forms authentication cookie with the response which needs to be passed along with each future web service call. Users wishing to use Forms authentication should see the Login and Logout methods documented below.
  • NTLM: NTLM authentication does not require calling the AuthenticationService.asmx before calling other web services. At the beginning of the call to the web service, the user is authenticated, and if successful, the call is processed normally. The web service will attach a Forms Authentication cookie to the response to improve performance in subsequent calls, but it is not required to use the cookie (the caller can be re-authenticated each time). The client must keep the TCP connection alive in between calls in order to re-use the cookie while configured to use NTLM. Each new TCP connection will require re-authentication.