Tax technology

Businesses must innovate and identify more efficient ways of meeting the ever-expanding needs of today, while also tackling tomorrow's challenges. Through the use of technology, tax teams can focus on high value work and distribute more relevant information, contributing to overall business success.

The challenge

We are starting to witness changes that will profoundly disrupt the tax industry forever. Tax authorities are increasingly going digital - e.g. Making Tax Digital (MTD), Country by Country, Common Reporting Standard (CRS) - and developing new tax policies requiring increased transparency and sharing of data.

Increased burden

The burden is on the tax department of businesses to report more data than they have ever had to before. Tax regimes such as Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), Common Reporting Standard (CRS), Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) and the EU directive on cross-border tax arrangements (DAC6) place a huge data burden on the tax department to sort through data and then report digitally.

Making Tax Digital

The global reality is that Making Tax Digital is merely part of a much wider trend involving the global digitalisation of tax. This trend should be embraced for a unique opportunity for the tax function to capitalise on technological advancements and gain control over data and processes.

The solution

Smith & Williamson assists businesses with understanding their processes and creating efficiencies using technology; for example, reviewing process requirements can include scoping, design, and implementation of tax software. We have extensive experience with many of the prominent tax technologies available.

Our services include advising clients on adopting technologies which help reduce effort and streamline their compliance processes. We can also assist businesses in using their data more efficiently for the purposes of management reporting and business insights. Through the use of visually appealing dashboards, businesses can gain insights into their tax position and analyse trends based on past performance and future predications.
Typical solutions include Robotic Process Automation (RPA), evaluation and implementation of enterprise, and tax applications and management reporting dashboards.

Robotic Process Automation

RPA software is a powerful tool that can perform manual, time-consuming, rules-based tasks, more efficiently than humans. For example, it is estimated that 15 minutes of human time is equal to one minute of robot time.

Use Robotic Process Automation to gather, collate and validate information including;

• Data extraction
• Data administration
• Data processing
• Tax computations
• Form processing
• Document management

The ease of deployment and the speed of processes open the doors of agility to businesses. By deploying RPA processes at the departmental level, they can support repetitive processes, thus achieving efficiencies and cost savings while preserving flexibility. These types of processes are especially common in tax, finance and accounting, HR and form processing, but can also be found in all parts of a business.

Benefits of Robotic Process automation

Focus

Re-focus your workforce in value-add processes and motivate them by removing the mundane tasks from their day to day work.

Time

Realise a 24/7 workforce, that saves you time by speeding up processes. Utilise the best mix of prompted and routinely scheduled processes to ensure continuity of tasks, even beyond business hours.

Output

Maximise output and deliver more for less. Through RPA you can produce more, analyse more, control more…DO MORE.

Regulatory

Meet your regulatory requirements and deadlines by using RPA to facilitate the preparation, consolidation and filing of tax and company returns.

Risk

Remove key person dependency, and the associated risk, while also creating task mobility and eliminating human errors.

Data Analytics

Data is everywhere. It is one of the most valuable assets a company owns.

By collating information from across their organisation and industry, businesses can gain a better understanding of their activities as well as insight into potential improvements and efficiencies. Advanced analytics tools assist in challenging these business assumptions.

Smith & Williamson can work with you to conduct data analytics and generate rapid business intelligence. Benefits to your business include improvements in tax reporting, better decision-making, cost reductions and identifying your tax trends.

Tax Reporting

Improve efficiency and accuracy of global tax reporting to effectively manage existing and new legislation, such as FATCA, CRS, MTD, DAC6, BEPs and many more.

Decision Making

Turn everyday information into useful and actionable insights, allowing you to make better decisions at the right time.

Cost Reduction

Make the necessary alterations to your business, ensuring minimal loss of time, resource and funds

Opportunities

Identify potential risks and opportunities, leading to better profitability, turnaround and quality

Making Tax Digital

MTD is HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC’s) strategy to modernise the tax system. As well as improving HMRC’s own internal systems, MTD involves mandatory digital record keeping and reporting by taxpayers.