Understand jurisdictions

Jurisdictions determine the tax calculation rate for locations. When running AFC transactions, AvaTax will look for the following jurisdiction information:

Bill to location: Location used to specify where the transaction is to be billed. This is required within the inv model, but it can also be set in the itms model (line level). If specified at the line level, this overrides the bill to location set on the invoice.
From location: This specifies the point of origin for a line item. This defaults to the bill to location.
To location: This specifies the point of destination for a line item. This defaults to the bill to location.

In AFC, a jurisdiction is set using one of the following jurisdiction types:

PCode (pcd): Persisted numeric identifier for a taxing jurisdiction.
Address: Specify a Country (ctry), State (st), County (cnty), City (city), and/or Postal Code (zip). Set the Street Address (addr) if you want to geocode the address (geo = true).
- The more complete the address information provided, the more accurate the results are.
- Country ISO is sufficient for taxation purposes for most foreign nations other than the USA, Canada, and Brazil.
- Country (ctry), State (st), and Postal Code (zip) are required for USA and Canada (at a minimum).
FIPS (fips): A standardized set of numeric or alphabetic codes issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to ensure uniform identification of geographic entities through all federal government agencies.
NPANXX (npa): A 6-digit number consisting of the location's 3-digit area code along with the next 3 digits of a North American dialing plan phone number.

The sections that follow describe AFC behavior when specifying jurisdictions, including how to obtain PCodes, a zip-only fallback feature, and an option to geocode a location.