Use of technology in tax will help increase tax base, improve compliance – PwC report

New Delhi, 26 March 2017: Companies need to invest and upgrade their technology in tax functions, just as they invest in other functions within their organisation. With the global tax landscape changing dramatically and tax authorities around the world increasingly focussing on enforcing compliance and expanding the tax base, it is imperative for companies to proactively invest in their tax functions and make it more technology enabled. This is according to PwC’s report, Tax technology: The next wave in business transformation.

A deep dive analysis of the existing tax operations and the technology used can help implement the correct strategy. With other functions in an organisation evolving with technology led innovation and tax being an important component across all functions, it is crucial for tax too to be future ready. The report includes a sample score sheet with relevant parameters to help companies ascertain how technologically evolved their tax function is.

The report extensively analyses various elements of tax ecosystem including sources of tax, data acquisition, tax data management, reporting and analytics. Using the right set of tools or platforms can significantly augment the benefits provided by tax technology solutions. There are multiple tax tools that can help organisations optimise operational efficiency of their tax functions. The new report by PwC gives an overview of some of the new tax tools available in the industry that can help companies upgrade their tax function.

The implementation of tax technology can:

• Create capacity among employees
• Eliminate single user-single-computer dependence
• Augment analysis to ease understanding
• Improve an organisation’s forecasting and scenario-planning capability
• Improve the quality of its deliverables (tax reporting)
• Help in retaining and enriching its institutional knowledge
• Ease its response to audits
• Strengthen its internal controls and avoid material weaknesses
• Reinforce its data security

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