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Wolters Kluwer North America Acquires Interest In Esalestax.com, Inc.

CCH INCORPORATED, esalestax.com Will Co-develop,
Market Full Range of Sales and Use Tax Management Services

(CHICAGO, October 17, 2001) – Wolters Kluwer North America said today that it has acquired a minority interest in esalestax.com, Inc., Englewood, Co., a provider of Internet-based sales and use tax compliance software. Esalestax.com (www.esalestax.com) will co-develop and market sales and use tax services with CCH INCORPORATED (www.cch.com), a leading provider of tax and business law information and software and a Wolters Kluwer company. Terms of the investment were not released.

CCH’s Federal and State Tax Group (http://tax.cchgroup.com) currently 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 25,000 local and state jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada. In addition, the company offers a line of specialized software products for businesses in especially complex sales and use tax environments, including telecommunications, retail, utilities, leasing, food and automobile industries.

Esalestax.com serves Internet-based merchants as a vertical service provider for sales and use tax compliance by providing real time calculations at the time of sale.

"Our investment in esalestax.com is a valuable and strategic one for Wolters Kluwer," said Nancy McKinstry, CEO, Wolters Kluwer North America and executive board member for Wolters Kluwer nv. "It allows us to take an important step forward in providing more complete and powerful compliance tools, especially in the growing area of Internet-based interactive forms, filings and remittances."

"We have aligned ourselves with the very best in the tax compliance field," said Shawn Fahey, CEO, esalestax.com, Inc. "Together, merchants today need only look to our combined solutions for all of their tax compliance, filing and remittance needs."

CCH and esalestax.com plan to provide a seamlessly integrated compliance solution to businesses conducting sales activities, such as traditional and online retailers, telecommunications and other service providers, manufacturers, consumer product marketers and utilities. As a result, organizations can focus on their core business strategies, simplify their backroom operations and reduce their compliance costs.

Specifically, CCH and esalestax.com will jointly develop, operate and market new services, including populated or dynamically calculated sales and use tax forms from thousands of jurisdictions. Leveraging CCH’s existing line of sales tax software compliance forms, this new ASP-based product will provide customers with a broader range of compliance options, including electronically filing forms and paying their sales and use taxes to the appropriate tax authorities. The companies expect to begin offering this application to the market in early 2002.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer North America, headquartered in Chicago, 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 Publishing, Inc., New York City/Gaithersburg, Md.; CCH Canadian, Toronto; CCH INCORPORATED, Riverwoods, Ill.; CCH Legal Information Services, New York City; and CCH Tax Compliance, Torrance, Calif. 

esalestax.com (established in 1999) has launched a product suite for online sales transaction taxation service that will support merchants. The Englewood, Colorado-based company offers merchants the first Web-based portal solution for Internet sales and use tax processing.

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