Tax Technology Journey

Building Blocks
For Tax

More efficient, connected, secure and scalable.

What is
Digital Transformation?

The compliance tracker could be your way into the digital transformation, the way to organize the big box of building blocks and build a connected, efficiently run, scalable and secure house.

Do you want your tax department to go through a digital transformation, but you don’t know where to start? Let us help you define your Tax Technology roadmap.

In order for us to help you go through a digital transformation, you should understand a few things:

1. People-Process-Technology needs to be synchronized

2. Digital transformation is a long-term view, quick fixes (standalone applications) don’t help you

3. A digital transformation is continuous and a mindset, it doesn’t stop after implementing a few applications

4. Building a house of blocks

Why People-Process-Technology
has to be in sync

If one of the three elements lack digitalization, it will break the entire cycle, because:

  1. Applications (technology) enable processes to be digitalized

  2. People follow processes

  3. People therefore leverage from technologies implemented improved processes

In the literal sense a process is just a few steps that need to be taken in order to go from A to B. It takes people to execute on those commands in order to go from A to B.

Technology allows people to work more efficient, but it will never replace the people. In other words, technology leverages people so they can do more with their time. This makes deciding on the technology type more important to do together with your team, instead of making it a decision from the top, because your team consists of the people that are embracing the technology.

In the case of tax compliance this means: from financial data to a prepared tax return.

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Move to a
Block Approach

People include not just your employees but also other people who are directly involved in your processes and supply chain, i.e. your suppliers and clients. Concerning your in-house tax team you should ask yourself “do we have the right people onboard for a successful digital transformation and/or do they require a mind shift?”

Do you recognize the many applications that have been demoed to you? How many of those have been actually adopted by your team? And how have they been evaluated? Decide which applications to implement to improve your processes. The key is to build a block house using blocks that:

  1. Connect to each other seamlessly

  2. Increase efficiency of data and people’s workflows

  3. Is easily scalable, both bigger and smaller

  4. Secured so nobody can enter unwanted

Let us help you decide which building blocks you should be using. 

Building blocks

Now you know why, what and how changes in the tax landscape will start changing your own role and responsibility. TPA is providing you with a webinar series on ‘Building Blocks for Tax software’, where each webinar connects ‘one software type with another type’ through the use of connectors or so-called APIs. It is necessary to build a house that connects the building blocks seamlessly together, so it is 1 strong house and every room has an open door. The higher the connectivity, the least amount of manual work that needs to be done, resulting in fewer possibilities of human error.

Building blocks full of Tax and Legal technology tools are very appealing but will not work well if the blocks don’t fit (connect) on top of each other. What is often forgotten is that the connection to other tools is more important that the tool itself. Let us help you further understand how to decide which building blocks you should be using.

  • Lego for Tax - The Next Digital Transformation
  • Compliance Tracker + OneraX
  • SasViya / Connector / Source Tier
  • The 3x3x3 and OneBiller Approach
  • How To Automate The Relevant Tax Data Transfer Into Your Country-By-Country Reporting?
  • Getting Towards An End-to-End Technology Solution on VAT for Europe
  • How Do The Tax Authorities Deal With Tax Data Management - Digital Mailbox
  • Towards A Co-Compliance Model For Tax Between Tax Authorities and Taxpayers

Lego for Tax - The Next Digital Transformation

A digital transformation only helps the organization if the tools it embraces are connected to each other, otherwise you’re still putting siloed solutions in place. The real advantage comes when systems “talk” to each other.

Through many conversations with corporates on their digital transformation and on how they decide which technologies to embrace: Their world today is one big box of individual building blocks, without the connections which makes it so special.

Key is to build your building blocks for tax using the following criteria:
1. connect to each other seamlessly.
2. Increase efficiency of data and people’s workflows.
3. is easily scalable, both bigger and smaller.
4. Secured so nobody can enter unwanted.

Compliance Tracker + OneraX

A digital transformation only helps the organization if the tools it embraces are connected to each other, otherwise you’re still putting siloed solutions in place. The real advantage comes when systems “talk” to each other.

Through many conversations with corporates on their digital transformation and on how they decide which technologies to embrace: Their world today is one big box of individual building blocks, without the connections which makes it so special.

Key is to build your building blocks for tax using the following criteria:
1. connect to each other seamlessly.
2. Increase efficiency of data and people’s workflows.
3. is easily scalable, both bigger and smaller.
4. Secured so nobody can enter unwanted.

SasViya / Connector / Source Tier

A digital transformation only helps the organization if the tools it embraces are connected to each other, otherwise you’re still putting siloed solutions in place. The real advantage comes when systems “talk” to each other.

Through many conversations with corporates on their digital transformation and on how they decide which technologies to embrace: Their world today is one big box of individual building blocks, without the connections which makes it so special.

Key is to build your building blocks for tax using the following criteria:
1. connect to each other seamlessly.
2. Increase efficiency of data and people’s workflows.
3. is easily scalable, both bigger and smaller.
4. Secured so nobody can enter unwanted.

A Structured and Automated Model for HQ/SSC/Other Intercompany Service Charges - The 3x3x3 and OneBiller Approach

TPA Global has designed a full and automated standardized model to charge any I/C services together with the in-house IT/Finance/Tax teams called “3x3x3”. The first in-house projects were designed and implemented 5 years ago.

OneBiller is the only full-service software solution that centralizes the intercompany accounting function of multinational organizations to automate manual processes and reduce back-office costs, reduce global compliance and tax risks, and optimize resource efficiency without using a pricey license-based implementation method. Using the “3x3x3” design, together with the OneBiller implementation, companies will:

  • Prevent Excessive Indirect Tax Payments Globally
  • Avoid Compliance Risks & Tax Penalties
  • Avoid tax on (deemed) interest payments for unpaid intercompany transactions
  • Provide accurate business performance reporting
  • Improve Productivity of Company Resources

FourQ is the only full-service, complete solution for automating intercompany invoice management for large, multinational organizations and their suppliers. They employ industry-leading expertise to improve shared service productivity while reducing global tax and compliance exposure.

How To Automate The Relevant Tax Data Transfer Into Your Country-By-Country Reporting?

During this webinar, the first ‘building block’ will be the R7 tool by Cygnet, which extracts the tax relevant data pool for CbCR, VAT and your intercompany transactional matrix etc. This way you need to only extract data once, instead of organizing data extraction for each tax workflow separately.

Through R7 and a connector with another piece of software for transfer pricing, named TP Genie, the first excel spreadsheet – out of 3 – of the CbCr is being completed, which allows you to automate lots of data handling and financial workflows, to free up your tax team to perform the CbCr ‘outlier analysis’ as well as the ‘XML-conversion’, both of which are additional functionalities you’ll find in the TP Genie toolbox.

A universal approach to collection of ‘data relevant for tax’ will be a pre-requisite to bring efficiencies into your tax workflows – often by the demand of the CFOs – and will often secure a proper ‘in control on tax compliance’ statement as well.

We invite you to this interactive webinar, where various polls will be used to get the input from our audience during the event. In addition, a few short videos will be shown to illustrate the more holistic way in which tax data needs to configured and transformed to be ready for the filing in the digital mailbox of the tax authorities.

Getting Towards An End-to-End Technology Solution on VAT for Europe

By offering a ‘single source of data’ and linking it with a ‘single source of information’, modern tax technology is not far away from being implemented. TPA and its network partners highlight the latest insights into the dashboarding of your ‘building blocks for tax’ in such a manner that all stakeholders get their insights at the right time and with the relevant variables.

Since VAT is the frontrunner on tax technology and digital transformation of tax workflows, this session of the ‘building blocks for tax’ will be fully dedicated to the latest VAT technology solutions in the EU.

eClear

As a VAT technology partner of TPA – eClear is showcasing their database solution VAT Rules which gives you the ‘right’ answer for VAT and customs treatment in European countries on a ‘real time’ base; directly connected and on-demand available via easy to integrate pre-built plugins to your ERP/shop system/ marketplaces. By pre-assigning millions of physical products sold through merchants/platforms across the EU, the machine learning applied does give you the proper treatment for your product master data. Once assigned, your inventory is permanently linked and is automatically kept up to date regarding applicable VAT rates and Customs tariffs all over Europe. This functionality feeds directly into your shop checkout process allowing to always display the right VAT rate and Customs tariff to your customer. On top of that, eClear provides a solution disrupting the concept of VAT returns itself for cross-border BCB eCommerce business – end-to-end full-service clearing solution resulting in 0% VAT liability and 0% audit risk for merchants.

R7 by Cygnet Infotech

Connections with other VAT technology – like the R7 tool by Cygnet – is shown by linking the data/invoices generated into a general ledger/cost center environment to be extracted and cleaned-up – i.e., cross referenced to various data sources – which after all VAT relevant datasets are being accumulated, lead to the relevant input fields for your VAT returns. Subsequent conversion into XML and filing to the digital mailbox of tax authorities, with hardly any human intervention, would be the target of all international businesses doing cross border transactions. In addition, a few slides will be sped on the global mobile compliance tracker, a so-called ‘single source of information’ which allows local finance and local compliance to stick to the production calendars of VAT, excise and duties reporting on a timely base, with the lead compliance being able to change the ‘internal deadlines’ and/or ‘the capacity planning’ on 1 or more output with 3 clicks on their mobile. In other words, the compliance tracker offers you ‘actionable insights’.

As you can see from the start of the webinar series ‘building blocks for tax’, the tools and connections between them are becoming more realistic by the day. By keeping your ‘building blocks’ approach, while taking the ‘inspire people, determine the right process and select the proper technology as facilitator’ as your guidance on each of you tax technology projects, you will drive success into your organization. After all, tax wants to be(come) the co-pilot to your business and – by a data driven approach to taxation – allow you to perform your in-house services on a ‘real-time’ base.

How Do The Tax Authorities Deal With Tax Data Management - Digital Mailbox

TPA Global is pleased to present our next episode in our webinar series on ‘Building Blocks for Tax’. This session will showcase the Vizor Software, who, for many years, have been involved in supporting governments on regulatory technology for data received from financial institutions as well as tax technology for data received from taxpayers. Their involvement in more than 40 governments provides us a view on how the tax authorities are expecting to receive the tax relevant data packages from the taxpayers, as well as what techniques are typically used to analyze the accuracy, completeness and compliant nature of the datasets received.

While a tool like TP Genie does populate the 3 tables of a Country-by-country report (CbCr), where next to completing the form, an extensive version of an ‘outliers analytics’ is provided. Vizor Software is developing systems which are doing the same ‘behind the digital mailbox’ on behalf of tax authorities.

Key Highlights

  • If you’re a corporate taxpayer, can you map the dataset which the tax authorities requested in the relevant format with the expectation behind the ‘digital mailbox’, to ease your compliance burden?
  • If you know how tax authorities do their ‘due diligence’ on datasets received from taxpayers, would this allow you to be in a better shape if you could do the same analysis before filing your tax data through the ‘digital mailbox’?
  • Are we expecting tax authorities to offer APIs and other connectors, so ‘clean tax data’ produced by taxpayers can simply be released to the tax authorities through a single push button in your financial, salary, VAT and other administrations?
  • How does the ‘outlier analysis’ by tax authorities change the name of the game of ‘tax risk management’ in the not-so-distant future?
  • What are the processes behind the ‘exchange of tax information between tax governments’, i.e., how much synching of data architecture and data management across borders is happening behind the ‘digital mailbox’?

TPA Global and Vizor Software will provide you with a variety of examples where tax technology has reached the next phase and where the tax technology used by tax authorities is expected move towards. A recent publication by the OECD on the Tax Administration 3.0 is already visualizing the situation for individual taxpayers, self-employed entrepreneurs and MNEs in the year 2030.

Towards A Co-Compliance Model For Tax Between Tax Authorities and Taxpayers

As a wrap-up of the webinar series, learn to combine different tax technology tools to create end-to-end processes.

The building blocks for tax webinar series presents to you a series of “carwash for tax” concepts, where turn-key projects have been combining data sets across different tax types as well. Besides the applications by corporates, this closing session of the series #1 will be addressing:

  • the co-compliance concepts introduced by the tax authorities in Singapore and Brazil; as well as
  • a full overview of all tax technology software packages presented before and how to combine their functionality through “turn-key” solutions.

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