In this episode of the SALTovation podcast, we speak with Erin Neer, founder and CEO of MUNIRevs, and our very own Judy Vorndran. Erin has worked in municipal finance for over 18 years. As a former finance director in Colorado, she realized that the way sales taxes were collected was archaic. Businesses were still sending in manually calculated paper coupons to remit their taxes, and the city staff then had to handle that mail, key in the data and make a deposit to the bank. So Erin created MUNIRevs in 2011 that works with communities to automate their business revenue collection.
Erin talks in this episode about how she founded MUNIRevs and how her product provides an easy platform for cities and taxpayers. She discusses what it's like to work with the state government and how MUNIRevs developed trust to garner more jurisdictions. Listen as she shares her advice on how to go all in after you see a need and go for it.
Questions asked and answered in this Episode:
- How did Erin get to where she is today?
- What is MUNIRevs? Is the product as it is today what she was hoping it would become? Did it start out as something else?
- What has it been like to work with the state to facilitate the ability to fund the cities and make it easier for cities and taxpayers?
- Does Erin think having other jurisdictions use MUNIRevs help them get other jurisdictions to sign on to the platform?
- What type of products do they provide?
- How did they get Denver to choose MUNIRevs?
- How is MUNIRevs working with Alaska?
- How many developers do they have? Do they learn some basics of sales tax?
- How do they keep up with the legislative changes?
- How long did it take to get that initial launch? Who was the first jurisdiction to sign on?
What You Will Discover:
- [00:48] Erin’s career trajectory
- [04:39] What is MUNIRevs
- [08:17] What it’s been like to work with state
- [14:31] How they established themselves as the preferred resource
- [16:14] The various systems
- [17:27] How they got Denver on board
- [20:55] Working with Alaska
- [27:33] How flexible they have to be to
- [27:33] The back end of MUNIRevs’ technology
- [30:57] Keeping up with the legislative changes
- [32:26] The initial launch and the first jurisdiction to sign on
- [38:15] Erin’s advice to go all in
- [42:17] A team to answer questions
- [43:06] A few fun facts about Erin
Quotables:
- “That’s where it’s grown. It’s just more modules and more needs because we listened to what our businesses and our clients needed us to build next.” - Erin Neer [08:11]
- “Enforcement shouldn’t be a negative way to get tax out of vendors.” - Judy Vorndran [12:33]
- “One of the biggest things that helps us make it happen is the way that we design the system from day one was to be nimble.” - Erin Neer [28:22]
- “The conversation this year with COVID has been really interesting. You no longer have to explain the payment process and everything. It’s more
