Not only does it depend on what state or country the customer lives in, but now consumers are also increasingly shopping on the phone, so it also depends on where the purchaser is — down to the city block — and where the packages are being shipped.

“Our system knows those kinds of things, and can calculate it on the fly. It’s a technology solution to a problem that has been around forever,” said Avalara founder and CEO Scott McFarlane.

The company told AllThingsD that it has raised $20 million in fresh capital. The round was led by by Battery Ventures, and will be used to fuel the company’s growth, including domestic, international and mobile opportunities.

Based in Bainbridge Island, Wash. — just a short ferry ride away from Seattle — Avalara has 275 employees and has been around for almost a decade. It not only provides the service to physical retailers, but also to some online retailers through third-party vendors, such as point-of-sale systems or other platforms, such as eBay’s Magento.

McFarlane said there are more than 10,000 businesses using its solutions, and more than 200 manufactures have chosen to use Avalara as its tax platform. Other companies competing in the space include ADP’s Taxware and Thomson Reuters’ Sabrix.

For the most part, customers won’t even know they are using Avalara — but in general, the company’s profile has been raised as other companies, like Amazon, bring the issue of paying sales tax online into the spotlight. McFarlane said that Avalara will help conduct almost a billion transactions this year, and on a busy day during the holidays it will conduct 500 transactions a second.

The company has now raised a total of $69 million from investors, including the Benaroya Company, Pioneer Venture Partners and Sageview Capital. Part of a previous round, about $10 million, was used to buy out existing investors.

Correction: The total amount Avalara has raised in capital has been updated to be correct.

ATP Capital is announcing on Wednesday that it will henceforth be known as Relay Ventures. The firm is also detailing a new $150 million mobile fund, a successor to its BlackBerry Partners Fund, which is now fully invested, having backed 25 companies, four of which have been acquired. The new fund, Relay stressed, will remain platform agnostic as was the prior one, despite its name. Relay has already made three investments as part of the new fund.

“We are one of the most active investors in mobile computing,” Relay co-managing partner John Albright said in a statement. “Our continued specialization and focus on the rapidly growing and advancing mobile industry has been well received by our (limited partners), almost all of which returned for this new fund.”

The new fund’s lead investor is Northleaf Capital Partners; corporate investors include Corus Entertainment, Thomson Reuters and Research In Motion.

Finally, Relay said it is opening a Silicon Valley office that will include Kevin Talbot, who has relocated to the Bay Area from Toronto, and venture capitalist John Occhipinti, who is joining the firm.

Thirty-six U.S. venture-capital funds raised more than $7 billion in the first quarter of 2011. That’s up 76 percent, by dollar commitments, compared with the first quarter of 2010, which saw 44 funds raise $4 billion, according to Thomson Reuters and the NVCA.

Bessemer Venture Partners VIII raised $1.6 billion during the quarter, while Sequoia Capital 2010 raised $1.3 billion and J.P. Morgan’s (JPM 46.97, +0.13, +0.28%) Digital Growth Fund raised $1.2 billion.

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InsideView, which today announced $12 million in funding in a series C round led by Foundation Capital, aims to be something of a personal CIA for salespeople. The service deploys within existing CRM applications like Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com, Microsoft CRM and SugarCRM to enhance the information view on a person or company with data gathered from numerous sources. When you look at the window for a target, you see information taken from their LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, information about them from Jigsaw, but also what people are saying about their company on Twitter. There’s also corporate financial and relationship data from CaptialIQ–a powerful financial database owned by McGraw-Hill–and a news feed from Thomson-Reuters.

Yes, it’s another social enterprise software play says CEO Umberto Milletti, but with one key difference. “Most of the social CRM space has been focused on the marketing and support use cases. We’re very focused on business-to-business sales,” he told me. “It’s using social media together with traditional news and financial information to make salespeople more productive. We turn all that information into business intelligence.”

With the funding round, Foundation’s Paul Holland, a former exec at Kana Communications, is joining the InsideView board. Its prior investors–who are also participating in this round–are Emergence Capital Partners, Rembrandt Venture Partners and Greenhouse Capital Partners.

The company has more than 1,000 corporate customers, including Adobe, BMC, Cap Gemini, Experian and SuccessFactors, and supports some 75,000 end users.

Millietti said the funding will be used to boost distribution. “We want to get every customer-facing sales professional in the world an InsideView acount,” he said.

Posting fourth-quarter earnings this morning, Sprint said it added 1.1 million total wireless subscribers, 58,000 of them two-year contract customers. Quite a milestone for a company that hasn’t seen a gain in postpaid subscribers in 13 quarters and a sign that Sprint may finally be turning a corner. Another good sign: Postpaid churn fell to 1.86 percent from 2.11 percent in the third quarter, and prepaid churn fell to 4.93 percent from 5.32 percent. And another: For the quarter, Sprint added almost 1.1 million wireless subscribers, its best showing in nearly five years.

All welcome news, even if Sprint is still losing money. The company reported a fourth-quarter loss of $929 million, or 31 cents a share, on revenue of $8.3 billion, up from $7.9 billion a year ago. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters most recently forecast a loss of 30 cents a share on $8.15 billion in revenue. Said Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, “Sprint CEO Dan Hesse might be forgiven for the temptation to hang a “Mission Accomplished” banner on the aircraft carrier that is Sprint. To his credit, he expressly declined to do so. Still, the company has at last achieved post-paid and total subscriber growth, customer service levels have improved, churn rates have been brought under control, and revenues were up.”

At $4.41, Sprint shares are up 1.15 percent in early trading as I write this.

The videogame maker posted a GAAP loss of $322 million, or 97 cents a share, on revenues of $1.1 billion. However, when stock-based compensation and revenue deferrals are excluded, the company recorded a 59-cent profit, jumping 33 cents from the year earlier.

Those modified numbers beat expectations of analyst who forecast the company’s earnings to surge 76 percent to 58 cents a share from the year-ago period, according to Thomson Reuters.

It is now the fourth quarter in a row that EA has beat consensus.

Meanwhile, the company continues to try to call attention to its digital results as it transitions its business model–from one where gamers pay $60 for an Xbox title to one where consumers pay a few bucks for an iPhone game or play Facebook games that may be free and monetized through other mechanisms, such as virtual goods.

But it’s hard to convince anyone of the prospects when its packaged-goods business generated $1.1 billion in revenues and its digital games generated a paltry $211 million.

Still, its digital business is up, jumping 39 percent compared with the same period a year earlier. “We are on track to hit three-quarters of a billion in revenues this year as planned, and we were No. 1 on key platforms like iPhone and iPad,” said CFO Eric Brown in an interview.

Digital revenues mainly consist of mobile games, digital downloads and social games built by its Playfish subsidiary.

Mobile revenues totaled $59 million in the third quarter, up from $56 million last year. EA does not break out revenues of its Playfish subsidiary, but said it had 39 million monthly active unique visitors (MAUs) in social games, falling from 58 million in the year-ago period.

Brown explained that its monthly uniques are down, much like those of others in the industry that were hurt when Facebook changed its policies about a year ago on how much games could be promoted on the social network.

“That business is performing well. We are No. 2 in the social games space. MAUs are down for the entire segment, although we are monetizing better, and our strategy is to bring more EA-branded properties to the social network space,” he said.

Yesterday, Monopoly launched on Facebook, joining FIFA soccer and Madden.

The company also announced that it will repurchase up to $600 million in stock over the next 18 month, which demonstrates the company’s confidence in its digital strategy, said EA’s Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello in the release.

Brown: “We have excess cash and there’s characteristics evolving for our digital strategy, as we build our digital revenue, and it becomes more profitable and predictable.”

Does that mean we won’t see any more big acquisitions–like the $400 million Playfish purchase– by the game maker?

“We still would have the opportunity to do small acquisitions. For instance, we recently purchased Chillingo, so we still have capital to do small scale, but we don’t intend to do large acquisitions in the short term.”

Apple’s stock rose above $300 per share today for the first time in the company’s history. It’s trading around $301 or so as I write this, which puts Apple’s market cap above $275 billion. The stock has spiked more than 40 percent this year, and analysts say it could go higher still. According to Thomson Reuters, 46 of 49 analysts who cover Apple have a price target of $300 or higher on the stock, and three of those have targets of at least $400 a share.

Apple (AAPL) is due to report fiscal fourth quarter results on Monday, October 18, after the bell.

Obviously.

Posting second-quarter results after the market’s close Monday, the company reported earnings per share of $2.61, up from $2.32 a share last year. and sales of $23.72 billion, up from $23.25 billion last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been looking for earnings of $2.58 a share on $24.2 billion in revenue. So while the company’s higher profit exceeded expectations, its revenue came as something of a disappointment, and investors have dragged its shares down about three percent in after-hours trading.

Looking ahead, IBM (IBM) raised its 2010 net income guidance to $11.25 per share. That’s a nickel-per-share increase over its most recent guidance and suggests the company is confident that uptick in spending will continue.

Said CEO Sam Palmisano, “In the second quarter we again delivered double-digit earnings-per-share growth, increased margins, as well as improving constant-currency revenue performance in our ongoing software, services and hardware businesses, and in all geographies. With the benefit of our strategic growth investments, our mix of higher-value business and the introduction of new System z and Power Systems, we are confident of our ability in the second half of the year to continue our strong business performance, grow profit and drive shareholder returns.”

“Ongoing economic uncertainty has kept many limited partners and venture capital firms on the fundraising sidelines in 2010 and this hesitation is likely to continue for the remainder of the year,” NVCA President Mark Heesen said in a statement.

Certainly looks that way. Consider the chart below (click to enlarge).

Quite the downward trend, yeah? What is it that Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz often says? “The best time to invest is when people are cowering under their desks.” Hmm. Something like that…

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected the company to break even on revenue of $671 million. Sirius added 171,441 net subscribers during the period and reiterated its view that it expects to add more than 500,000 subscribers this year.

With quarterly net subscriber additions of 171,441, Sirius (SIRI) ended March with 18,944,199 subscribers. Quite an improvement over the year-ago quarter, when it lost 404,422 subscribers.

“Continued positive subscriber growth, double-digit growth in revenue, and a sharp focus on costs resulted in the highest quarterly adjusted operating income in the company’s history,” Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin said in a statement. “The continuing recovery of the automotive sector and expanding signs of increased consumer spending are encouraging signs for the company’s growth prospects.”

Still more good news for the company, which last week avoided delisting from Nasdaq. That said, at $1.14, Sirius shares are trading down 7.32 percent this morning. Evidently, the revenue miss didn’t go over too well with investors.

Welcome news given recent concerns about the impact new Apple (AAPL) iPhones headed to market might have on sales. Sadly for RIM (RIMM), the revenue and earnings per share posted today were both below expectations. The company earned $710.1 million, or $1.27 per share, on revenue of $4.08 billion. Analysts were expecting earnings of $1.28 per share on revenue of $4.3 billion, according to consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters.

At $69 RIM shares are down 6.7 percent in after-hours trading.

“The Sun integration is going even better than we expected,” said Oracle President Safra Catz. “We believe that Sun will make a significant contribution to our fourth quarter earnings per share as well as meet the profitability goals we set for next year.”

Oracle (ORCL) said its net income for the quarter fell to $1.2 billion, or 23 cents a share, from $1.3 billion, or 26 cents a share last year. But revenue rose to $6.4 billion from $5.5 billion. Excluding items, earnings for the quarter were 38 cents a share, which is what analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had been expecting.

Two last details worth noting: Revenue from new software licenses rose 13 percent during the quarter. Another sign that enterprise spending on technology is on the rise.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is a funny guy. From the company’s earnings release:

“Every quarter we grab huge chunks of market share from SAP,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “SAP’s most recent quarter was the best quarter of their year, only down 15%, while Oracle’s application sales were up 21%. But SAP is well ahead of us in the number of CEOs for this year, announcing their third and fourth, while we only had one.”

Oracle Reports GAAP EPS of $0.23, Non-GAAP EPS of $0.38

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., March 25, 2010 — Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) today announced fiscal 2010 Q3 GAAP total revenues were up 17% to $6.4 billion, while non- GAAP total revenues were up 18% to $6.5 billion. Excluding the impact of Sun Microsystems, Inc., which Oracle acquired on January 26, 2010, GAAP total revenue grew 7%. GAAP new software license revenues were up 13% to $1.7 billion, and up 10% to $1.7 billion excluding Sun. GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 13% to $3.3 billion, while non-GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 12% to $3.3 billion. GAAP operating income was down 5% to $1.8 billion, and GAAP operating margin was 29%. Non-GAAP operating income was up 13% to $2.9 billion, and non-GAAP operating margin was 45%. GAAP net income was down 10% to $1.2 billion, while non-GAAP net income was up 9% to $1.9 billion. GAAP earnings per share were $0.23, down 11% compared to last year while non-GAAP earnings per share were up 9% to $0.38. GAAP operating cash flow on a trailing twelve-month basis was $8.2 billion.

“Our solid top line growth, coupled with disciplined expense management, was key in generating $8.0 billion of free cash flow over the last twelve months,” said Oracle CFO Jeff Epstein.

“The Sun integration is going even better than we expected,” said Oracle President, Safra Catz. “We believe that Sun will make a significant contribution to our fourth quarter earnings per share as well as meet the profitability goals we set for next year.”

“Exadata is the fastest growing product in Oracle’s history,” said Oracle President, Charles Phillips. “Introduced a little over a year ago, the Exadata pipeline is now approaching $400 million with Q4 bookings forecast at nearly $100 million. This strengthens both sales growth and profitability in our Sun server and storage businesses.”

“Every quarter we grab huge chunks of market share from SAP,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “SAP’s most recent quarter was the best quarter of their year, only down 15%, while Oracle’s application sales were up 21%. But SAP is well ahead of us in the number of CEOs for this year, announcing their third and fourth, while we only had one.”
In addition, Oracle’s Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $0.05 per share of outstanding common stock to be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on April 14, 2010, with a payment date of May 5, 2010. Future declarations of quarterly dividends and the establishment of future record and payment dates are subject to the final determination of Oracle’s Board of Directors.

Reporting fourth-quarter earnings this morning, the satellite-radio provider, which was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy last year, posted a profit of $14.2 million–less than a penny a share–compared with a year-earlier loss of $245.8 million, or eight cents. Revenue for the quarter rose 8.7 percent to $676.2 million.

An impressive showing, considering analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected a two-cent loss on revenue of $664 million.

Sirius (SIRI) added 257,028 subscribers during the quarter, bringing its total to 18.8 million. The company expects to add another 500,000 in 2010.

Quite a change from the profit of $1.24 billion, or 43 cents a share, the carrier reported in the quarter a year ago.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters (TRI) had been expecting earnings of 54 cents a share on $27.33 billion in revenue.

Revenue from Verizon’s (VZ) wireline services declined 3.9 percent to $11.5 billion. But data revenue rose 31 percent, to $16 billion. And wireless data revenue accounted for 32 percent of all service revenue, up from 26.5 percent a year earlier.

“Today’s 4Q results were eye-opening, if only because of the magnitude of the divergence,” Bernstein analyst Craig Moffet said in a research note issued after earnings. “Amidst an aggressive campaign to reinforce their positioning as the best-in-class network, and no doubt aided by AT&T’s well-publicized network travails, Verizon Wireless pulled away, with a solid 1.15M subscriber gain in post-paid and, more surprisingly, a huge opportunistic 1.0M subscriber gain in wholesale.”

But, Moffett cautioned, “…Wireline results were at least as weak as Wireless was strong, and Wireline remains the company’s center of gravity. Notable in the Wireline results were a worsening of trends in the legacy copper business and–perhaps worse–a serious miss in the growth of their FiOS business as well….Overall, we think the results must be judged as something of a disappointment.”