Our customers’ corporate tax departments are all about moving money around the world to lower their organization’s taxes. That is why they bring their tax department to the boardroom to discuss strategy. It’s hard to imagine how many dollars a corporation’s tax department has saved through high-value strategic work. The relevant questions for you to answer are: Where are you at your company? Do you have a seat at the boardroom table?
Tax departments want to spend less time doing low value work in order to have more time to think strategically and get back to the boardroom. That’s why the way data is being collected, transformed and calculated is becoming more and more important. Data collection is a big piece of the puzzle here, because corporate tax professionals historically focused on the inputs. Most people don’t realize how much work goes into calculating a single box of the tax return. You could have 20 or more tabs on an Excel® sheet. You’re focused on the inputs, not the outputs, because it takes a lot of time just to get the work done. But when it comes to the business needs, it is not the most valuable part of what we can contribute.
Corporations want to:
- Move from the back seat to the boardroom.
- Participate in more value-added activities.
- Increase focus on the inputs rather than the outputs.
- Create a seamless ebb and flow between insource, outsource and co-source.
“It’s common in the industry for corporate tax departments to spend so much time looking in the rearview mirror (at compliance and regulations) and not enough time looking forward,” says Jared D. Jones, CPA and Solution Architect with Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting North America.
Integrated Pieces of the Tax Process
To optimize, corporations need to:
- Receive and organize information for volume management and completeness with integrated solutions.
- Prepare and review more efficiently and accurately and manage and mitigate risk using integrated solutions.
- Deliver and store documents and manage retention policies with integrated solutions.
- Research all along the way to help make better decisions.
- Track projects with integrated solutions to provide greater visibility into project status, file holder, due dates and much more.
“Tracking this info is one of the hottest topics,” Jones says, “in order to get visibility into what’s happening. I’ve heard many customers say, ‘I couldn’t even tell you how many sales tax returns we’re completing. I can’t tell you whose working on what or what the deadlines are.’”.
Close the Workflow Gaps in Your Corporate Tax Department
As a corporate tax leader you are often challenged with doing more with less, dealing with change, compliance and accuracy to meet the demands of your business. However, simplifying your business operations is no easy task! So, we’ve taken a deeper dive for you in corporate tax workflow, to help you eliminate inefficient processes.
Discover how highly productive organizations use technology to improve their corporate tax workflow by filling in the gaps. Download the white paper: Increase Productivity in Your Tax Preparation Process.
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