Article
Future of tax function through automation
Tax technology and automation
Deloitte can help guide you into the future of the tax function through bite-sized automation
Tax teams are being challenged to work more efficiently, faster and do more with less. Leveraging technology and automation to provide operational efficiency can be the answer, but not every tax team has a large budget or needs a full tax technology program. Nonetheless, there are still ways in which Deloitte can help. Digestible chunks of automation can deal with the significant pain points and help tax teams gain confidence in technology. The result - process improvement in incremental stages in the most painful parts of the process, reducing risks and costs.
Your challenges
Preparing tax computations in house
Your organization spends valuable time on extracting and reformatting data, analyzing P&L account codes and manually inputting data in order to be able to begin the computation. Deloitte understands lack of time and conflicting demands often result in assumptions having to be made, which may result in missed opportunities and an imperfect audit trail.
High talent turnover in tax teams is often caused by frustration due to spending too much time on manual and repetitive tasks, and too little on tax matters. As a result, busy periods approach with teams under resourced and often unable to get replacements onboard in time to help ease the workload.
A challenging year-end
Year-end is a challenging time. Your tax teams often have to work long hours tackling data challenges and constantly changing numbers. In the meantime, business support is expected to carry on as normal.
Tax authorities becoming more data focused
Tax authority audits are starting to ask to for large amounts of data with respect to certain areas. This requires your team to look at all data in detail in advance of the tax authority receiving it; resulting in a significant increase on management time invested.
How Deloitte can help
We have transformed the way we do tax compliance internally and want to use that blueprint to implement process improvements for the market. Clients have seen their process transformed. Automation, including Robotic Process Automation (RPA), is allowing a move towards producing draft compliance at the press of a button. In the interim, there are multiple opportunities to automate the extraction and transformation of data ready for your team to begin work. Analytical capabilities have advanced significantly in tax in recent years. There is now machine learning embedded in our myInsight data classification tool, allowing tax teams to do tax, not data preparation and manual analysis.
Our professionals will work with you to identify process inefficiencies in the compliance process. The answer may be to use Robotics for manual and repetitive tasks but there are a variety of options depending upon your particular challenges. Our objective is to provide the long term fix, reducing risk, reducing costs and improving controls.
There are a range of ways to make the next year-end better. Some organizations may struggle to get budget for strategic solutions, like a dedicated tax reporting solution, however, you can make significant improvements to current processes while using Excel and the tools you already have in-house. Other low-cost options can also be used to automate data challenges such as Robotics to extract and re-format data. Small, digestible improvements can make the year-end less fearsome and help your team get to the answer quicker and better.
We know you need to be confident in the data you provide to the authorities. Deloitte can identify repetitive data input tasks and provide you with innovative automated solutions with a full audit trail and notifications to keep your tax professionals informed of any amendments made. This frees up your team to focus on the most interesting, value-add activities.
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