Is Avalara the only option for Colorado sales tax calculation?

[pspahn]

Searching around these forums I found a post from RJoyce1180 that discusses a custom sales tax app and it was concluded that Shopify does not allow anyone to develop apps that deal with sales taxes because of some contract with Avalara.

Can anyone confirm this is the case?

Colorado now has the Sales & Use Tax System (SUTS) which is a service that provides sales tax calculations and remittance. Going forward, it is stated that there will no longer be any third-party databases that will be certified, but they will still be under "hold harmless." I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I can't imagine any Colorado based businesses will be interested in using an expensive paid service like Avalara when there is a free state-provided alternative that doesn't hide it's requirements behind a gatekeeping sales person that simply must know your annual revenue before they tell you how much it costs.

Aside from some minor flaws, I would like to continue my development on a Shopify store/POS for our business that only handles store pickups and local deliveries, but it seems like I might be at the mercy of Avalara since that appears to be the only way to get the correct sales tax info.

Speaking with support, I was told that ZIP based calculations are the most accurate way to find sales taxes and I can only roll my eyes at that comment since that is absolutely not the case for our business. It was suggested that I use tax overrides and such but this is just simply not a practical way to handle something that needs to be automated. Imagine trying to add an override for every single customer every time they checkout. Not possible.

Am I coming to a dead-end with Shopify?