Indirect Taxation’s Data-Driven Storyline

The indirect tax landscape is shifting fast. US sales and use tax rate changes hit a 10-year high in 2023. The EU's VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) initiative is reshaping VAT compliance across Europe. And tax teams everywhere are being asked to do more with less.

Tax groups face a data problem, not just a compliance problem

In a Deloitte webcast poll of global tax leaders, 45% cited keeping up with evolving tax laws as their top challenge, but integrating tax-related data across the organization came in close at 37%. Meanwhile, 34% of respondents pointed to incorrect or incomplete source data as the leading operational pain point. The compliance burden is real, but the data challenge underneath it is just as significant.

Automation helps, but tax lags behind other functions

Despite the clear advantages of tax technology, the same poll found that tax reporting ranked last in automation among key business processes. Financial accounting, sales, and purchasing all showed higher degrees of automation. That gap creates risk. The more manual your tax processes are, the more exposed you are to errors, audit difficulties, and costly rework at month-end and quarter-end close.

What a purpose-built tax engine delivers

When native ERP tax functionality reaches its limits (often as a company expands into more states or countries) a dedicated tax engine becomes essential. Vertex's end-to-end tax software solutions provide automated indirect tax calculations across all products and services, automated updates for changing rates and rules, detailed reporting at state, county, city, and local levels, exemption certificate management, and return filing and remittance. The result is lower compliance risk and less time spent on manual workarounds.

Building a business case that gets budget approved

Getting investment approved means speaking the language of CFOs and CIOs. Three often-overlooked angles can strengthen the case: documenting rework to surface hidden costs, connecting tax automation to broader business improvements like faster invoice cycles, and showing how tax data analysis supports strategic decisions. Those decisions range from supply chain risk to new market entry.

Implementation insights from real-world deployments

Successful implementations that integrate the Vertex tax engine with Workday Financial Management follow a clear playbook: start with a fit/gap analysis, understand where your data lives, prioritize tax-critical processes, and bring in a third-party partner like Deloitte to bridge the tax and technology knowledge gap.

Together, Vertex, Workday, and Deloitte bring complementary strengths to indirect tax transformation: the technology, the platform, and the expertise to build a compliance program that scales.