Should I integrate authorities directly or use a unified API?
Direct integration means building and maintaining a separate integration for each authority — four APIs, four auth schemes, four sets of quirks — and rebuilding when any changes. A unified API means one integration against a canonical invoice, with the gateway absorbing authority differences. For most teams the unified approach is faster to ship and cheaper to maintain.
Side by side
Direct
Integrate each authority yourself
- Four APIs, docs and auth schemes
- Four money identities and success codes
- Separate sandbox/production per authority
- You own logging, quota and monitoring
- Rebuild when an authority changes
Unified
One integration via TaxBridge
- One canonical payload and response
- One auth model and error vocabulary
- One sandbox and production
- Logs, quota and monitoring built in
- Authority changes absorbed for you
When direct still makes sense
If you file with exactly one authority, at low volume, and have engineers who enjoy maintaining that adapter, a direct integration can work. The moment you add a second authority or need multi-branch, the unified approach usually wins.
Frequently asked questions
Is a unified API slower at runtime?
The extra hop is negligible next to the authority call itself, and you gain idempotency, retries and normalized errors.
Do I lose control with a gateway?
No — you still send your exact invoice data and receive the authority result; the gateway only handles translation, resilience and logging.
What about vendor lock-in?
You integrate against a clean canonical invoice, which is easier to move than four bespoke authority integrations.