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Analysis
Tax Technology and Automation
Fast forward to the future of the tax function through byte-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 part of the answer, but not every tax team has a large budget or needs a full tax technology program. This is where Deloitte can help. Digestible chunks of automation can address 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
Does your organization spend valuable time on extracting and reformatting data, analyzing P&L account codes and manually inputting data in order to be able to begin the tax computation process? 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
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 time on tax matters. As a result, tax teams are under-resourced and often unable to get replacements onboard in time to help ease the workload during busy periods.
A demanding year-end
Year-end is a challenging time. 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 increasingly asking for large amounts of data. This requires teams to review all their data in detail in advance of the tax authority receiving it; resulting in a significant increase in management time invested.
How Deloitte can help
Automation, including Robotic Process Automation (RPA), is allowing more tasks to be completed by the press of a button. The dream scenario will be a click producing draft computations once you have the statutory accounts, but that is still some way off. In the interim, there are multiple opportunities to automate the extraction and transformation of data ready for people to begin work. Analytical capabilities have advanced significantly in tax in past years. For example, machine learning embedded in Deloitte’s Data Classifier tool, allows tax teams to focus on tax, not data preparation and manual analysis.
Deloitte professionals 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.
You don’t always need budget for large scale 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 and compliance processes less fearsome and help your teams get to the answers they need 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. This frees up your team to focus on the most interesting, value-add activities.
Be the driving factor for the transformation of your tax function. See how Deloitte can help.
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