Many multinational corporations are faced with new challenges as they globalise their tax and global trade operations. The demands for transparency and timely responses are steadily increasing, driven by the efforts of governments to expand their tax base. Increasing regulations (HMRC's Making Tax Digital) and the need urgency to maintain and if possible reduce costs are constant struggles that every corporation faces — and the tax department can feel this firsthand. Senior leadership may now demand a greater level of visibility into their worldwide tax operations with so much at stake.
Any investment your business is about to make in tax technology to meet any new or changing regulatory requirements has never been more significant or critical. Without the right resources in place, you can expect your already stretched finance and tax department's workload to increase as they try to operate in the evolving tax landscape.
With increased compliance requirements, spreadsheets can potentially increase costs and certainly increase risk. With some businesses looking to relieve the pressure by outsourcing to accounting firms to review data which, in turn, means the process takes longer. Ultimately, using Excel is not an efficient or effective way for your tax team to work.
Additionally, organisations outsourcing tax compliance to an external service provider do not transfer all the risks to agents preparing the returns. Additionally, any underlying invoice processing or transactional inaccuracies could lead to a lack of control and create challenges to collect and analyse the data when needed at short notice in the future. Organisations might find it hard to escape from audits or financial penalties, which will adversely impact your company's risk rating with the tax authorities.