The First Clients

The first IntegriTax client was a Georgia paperboard company. Valerie and Lauren worked primarily on sales and use overpayment review projects for clients in the Southeast U.S. for several years. Realizing that they needed to maintain a steady flow of projects, they began to put an equal emphasis on providing high-quality service to their clients while steadily increasing the number of business contacts. After two years of hard work, they realized that they had made a good decision to start their own business when they completed a project for a nationally known audio electronics manufacturer in South Carolina. By this time, new clients who had heard of IntegriTax through word of mouth and referrals began contacting them. Several former clients that Valerie and Lauren had served at other tax consulting companies began to call on IntegriTax.

Growth Limitations

After five years, the two founding partners found themselves in a position where they were working for more clients as word spread in the industry about their emphasis on professional integrity and their "personal touch" approach to client service. With their business "booming," Valerie and Lauren decided to turn to someone they knew who could manage growth---a former supervisor at a consulting company they worked for---Nilesh Parekh.

Business Take-Off

In late 2001, Lauren and Valerie approached Nilesh about helping them grow the business they had started so that IntegriTax could compete at a national level. Nilesh, who at the time was looking for "something new to do," agreed to help manage the company's growth and provide direction for using more technology in the business. No stranger to building new operations and managing large multi-state national accounts, Nilesh had nearly 20 years of experience in growing new business in the tax industry and in managing a large staff. In addition, he had many professional contacts in the sales and use tax industry and at numerous State Departments of Revenue. As the third partner of the IntegriTax team, the addition of Nilesh began a period of steady growth and visibility for the company that continues to this day.

Growing and Growing

Within a year after Nilesh arrived, the staff count at IntegriTax doubled as four new tax analysts and more administrative and marketing support staff were added. Simultaneously, the company landed its first major multi-site, multi-state project for a food processing company. Since then, IntegriTax projects have grown in size and complexity as new, seasoned staff have been added to manage the burgeoning workload. In addition, IntegriTax capabilities have grown with new sales and use tax service offerings to meet the varied needs of its ever-larger list of clients.

Peering into the Future

In the first years of the company, IntegriTax only provided sales and use tax services to manufacturing clients in Georgia. Slowly, it began providing services to clients throughout the Southeast---Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama. Then, after contacting tax decision makers at large manufacturing companies that operated in or were headquartered in the Southeast, IntegriTax began conducting tax overpayment reviews at its clients' plants throughout the United States. Now, IntegriTax has grown to be the one largest group of sales and use tax experts in the Southeast. In addition to providing services for the manufacturing sector, we offer services to retailers and food service companies. Our list of services has also grown to include tax consulting on energy and property issues. IntegriTax is now able to work on behalf of any client, no matter where they work in the U.S. or where their operations are headquartered. And, we are planning to offer tax services to other business sectors including financial, education, entertainment, and hospitality. As a testament to hard work, innovation, and client satisfaction, the IntegriTax success story symbolizes the very spirit of business entrepreneurship.