4 Common Pitfalls of Tax Process Automation

Video Overview:

In this World Finance video, Alex Baulf, global tax management consultant at Grant Thornton UK, illustrates the four typical pitfalls businesses face in tax process automation. Below are the four he illustrates.

1. The "we've always done it that way" mentality, which hurts an organization's shift towards tax automation. Trying to simply transform and automate a current human process using a robotic process is not the ideal approach.
2. Not using the opportunity to cleanse your data. That could be master data, a VAT registration number, or an incomplete or missing bit of data in a tax authority database. Using your projects as an opportunity to look at data, Alex says, is a much better way of doing business.
3. Focusing on a single tax requirement in isolation without considering the wider commercial, legal, and regulatory impact that this particular change may have. 
4. Not taking ownership of the organizational tax policy when automation the tax process. Often people see technology and automated process as a silver bullet: something that ensures they’re compliant, and something they can rely on. But ultimately there will be a tax policy, a decision to charge tax, the rate, the location, and the timing, that needs to be signed off and approved by the tax function.

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In March 2019, tax professionals, solution experts, and our very own customers met in Munich for Vertex Exchange Europe. World Finance interviewed half a dozen delegates for an update on Europe’s tax compliance challenges and technological advancements.

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