Tax compliance and reporting outsourcing

There’s been considerable change in the tax world - change that has radically affected tax compliance and reporting. We’ve seen globalization, emerging markets, increased regulation, revenue authorities adopting a more sophisticated and commercial approach and the spread of mandatory electronic filing all driving businesses to embrace new tax technology and benefit from the opportunities faster, more accurate processing can bring.

As a result many businesses are rethinking their approach. In a recent Deloitte research project involving over 250 global companies, many said they were already implementing enterprise systems, introducing shared service centers and looking  for a single global service provider, offering integrated tax compliance and reporting services. A desire for improved quality and visibility was seen, with any new approach needing to be flexible and tailored, aligning with an organization and its unique resourcing needs.  Click here to download the whole report, which highlights the most important findings, reflects on developments and extrapolates our thinking on future direction.

Over the last two years, more than 500 Deloitte people from 50 countries have been rethinking tax compliance and reporting services.  We have focused on the three main elements, process, technology and resourcing models.

As compliance and reporting is never a case of ‘one method fits all’ Deloitte offers compliance services in a way that can be matched and tailored to an organizations circumstances. For example:

Method 1 – Decentralized

All the work is done locally in-country. There’s no global overlay, but the service is delivered using standardized global processes and technologies. 

Method 2 – Co-ordinated

There’s an important proportion of the work done locally, but it’s brought together, coordinated and managed at a single headquarter location near a client’s HQ. 

Method 3 – Centralized

As well as coordination through an HQ office, delivery of the services is undertaken centrally through compliance centers supported by local office engagement teams.

Rethinking compliance and reporting has put technology in the spotlight. Deloitte has deployed global systems to efficiently collect company data and generate tax and other returns or reports.

Engagement management systems are a critical part of successful tax compliance and reporting. Deloitte Tax Insight is an intelligent engagement management system, written in the latest Microsoft SharePoint software, it offers workflow task lists, information dashboards, status reports, and temporary document storage, as well as areas for team and engagement management.

Finally, effective teams have the right resourcing mix. Deloitte has offices in 150 countries and a network of specialist compliance and reporting partners and teams experienced in delivering complex global compliance services. We have an established network of compliance centers: a European center in Belgium that has been in operation for over 10 years, other ‘near-shore’ centers in South America, and Asia Pacific, and a ‘far-shore’ center in India.

Further understand the Deloitte approach to our service centers through the video below, which gives a virtual tour of the Deloitte Global Tax Center (Europe), located in Belgium. The center handles over 31,000 VAT and CIT returns in more than 40 countries, and files over 750 statutory accounts every year for many large organizations.