Wolters Kluwer North America Acquires Esalestax.com, Inc.

NEW YORK, September 17, 2002) – Wolters Kluwer North America announced today that it has acquired esalestax.com, Inc., Englewood, Co. This provider of Internet-based sales and use tax compliance software will become part of CCH INCORPORATED (CCH), a leading provider of tax and business law information and software and a Wolters Kluwer company.

esalestax.com will be integrated into CCH’s Sales and Use Tax Group (tax.cchgroup.com). Through this group, CCH sells a series of sales and use tax information products and compliance tools that provide timely and accurate tracking and reporting of sales and use tax rates in more than 7,500 local and state jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada. In addition, the company offers a line of specialized database and software products for businesses in especially complex sales and use tax environments, including telecommunications, retail, utilities, food and grocery industries.

The full acquisition of esalestax.com assets and employees comes less than a year after Wolters Kluwer first acquired a minority interest in the company. Based on that relationship, CCH already has developed and successfully introduced to the market ZIPsales® Returns. This product offers an automated solution for calculating and populating sales and use tax forms from thousands of jurisdictions as well as electronically filing and paying the appropriate state taxing authorities. As a result, multi-state organizations with significant sales and use tax compliance issues are able to simplify their backroom operations and reduce their compliance costs.

"The area of sales and use tax compliance is highly complex and time intensive for customers and continues to be an area in need of dynamic solutions," said Rick Cline, general manager of CCH Sales and Use Tax Group. "This acquisition helps us in realizing our goal of delivering solutions that offer an integrated approach to sales and use tax compliance with complete and accurate results."

On the front-end, CCH tax database offers solutions that integrate into its customers’ billing systems and applies the correct billing rate for sales tax to the invoices they send out. On the back-end – through ZIPsales Returns – CCH is able to take the data from that front-end transaction and calculate what the customer needs to pay to comply with their sales tax obligations. 

esalestax.com was established in 1999.

Wolters Kluwer North America, headquartered in New York, is a unit of Wolters Kluwer nv, Amsterdam. It is comprised of a number of highly respected legal, tax and business information, software and service companies, including Aspen Publishers, Incorporated, New York City/Gaithersburg, Md.; Bankers Systems Incorporated, St. Cloud, Minn.; CCH Canadian, Toronto, Ontario; CCH INCORPORATED, Riverwoods, Ill.; CCH Legal Information Services, New York City; and CCH Tax Compliance, Torrance, Calif.

Wolters Kluwer nv (www.wolterskluwer.com) is a multinational information services company with annual sales of more than EUR 3.8 billion, employing approximately 20,000 people in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. The company's core activities are Legal & Regulatory, Health, and Education. The financial results for the year 2002 will be announced on March 11, 2003; preliminary results will be announced in January 2003.

Wolters Kluwer was recently recognized by Forbes Magazine's highly esteemed global "Best Big Companies" business survey as the world's leading global media organization.