Post on 25-May-2020
Article
TAX TRANSPARENCY…ABOUT TIME!
Public Pressures & New LegislationPublic outcry on corporate tax avoidance has steadily increased, particularly in the
past few years. The media has inundated a number of global multinationals with
accusations of not paying their fair share of taxes in countries in which they operate.
Many governments have enacted or are considering new legislation requiring
heightened reporting standards. This means increasing levels of transparency and
visibility into the taxes being paid within each of their operating jurisdictions,
such as:
n Country-by-Country Tax Reporting directive2 [EU]
n Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS)3 [EU]
n Dodd-Frank Act4 [US]
n The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Standard5 [Global]
n Publish What You Pay (PWYP)6 [Global]
Given the growing public concern, increasing legislative scrutiny is likely to continue
as a cost of doing business in this environment.
The ChallengeClearly the challenge for Finance, and more specifically Tax departments, is how to
react quickly enough to support these required changes?
Key Questions to answer:
n Do I have a consistent starting point for all my tax data needs?
n Do I have visibility and access to all of my relevant tax data?
n Do I have the skilled Tax resources and the requisite tools to enable me to perform
ad hoc query and analysis when required?
n Do I have the necessary automated controls around my tax processes to ensure a
comprehensive view of our Tax position?
n How much of my team’s time is spent supporting the current reporting needs of
our organization and is there sufficient capacity to respond to the proposed
regulatory changes?
n Am I confident in the accuracy of my current Tax data set?
Longview Tax solves the transparency challenge, by automating results and centralizing all of your tax-sensitized
data into a single source.
“In our view, the debate around ‘fair tax’ has raised the bar in terms of the expectations of the level of tax
information provided by multinational companies and we expect the response will be a greater degree of disclosure
by many organisations.”1 Tax Transparency Seizing the Initiative,
Ernst & Young LLP 2013
1© 2014 Longview Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.
Tax transparency is driving the agenda of today’s Tax Department. Finance Executives are under pressure to respond to enquiries
for greater tax transparency from regulators, shareholders and the public at large. This, coupled with compressed timelines and
little patience for inaccuracies, has effectively changed the Tax landscape. The movement towards greater Tax transparency
is affecting large multi-nationals and small public companies alike. One of the main challenges is that companies are often
completely reliant on a combination of manual processes and a multitude of spreadsheets to meet these new information
demands. How can today’s tax department confidently report their numbers and ultimately provide the level of transparency that
is now becoming standard?
Increased tax transparency includes:
- Country by Country tax disclosure
- Regulations down to project level, time periods and historical periods
- All taxes including income, property, sales/VAT, environmental
Tax Transparency....About Time!
The Solution
If you observe companies utilizing best practices, you’ll notice a number of
important similarities when it comes to managing Tax:
- A drive towards centralizing their tax sensitive data to establish a starting
point for all tax department processes.
- Tight integration with finance to capture tax sensitive data, yet separately
managed from the traditional financial close process, to ensure the required
autonomy and flexibility to model, query and analyze their Tax specific data.
- Standardized tax processes with automated interfaces to mitigate the risk
of error during data input (typical when managing data in spreadsheets) to
gather tax data for month, quarter and year end processes.
Tax departments are now able to achieve the level of transparency and
visibility into their tax processes necessary to meet and exceed current
standards and regulations. Empowering tax to drive more value for their
function and the CFO!
Longview Tax produces total tax contributions by country
Longview Tax is built on the robust Longview platform that automates manual
processes, provides a standard approach and data model, audit trail and
workflow, which increases control and provides confidence in the results to all
your stakeholders.
“When technology plays a greater role in the completion of tasks, tax
departments can devote more time and attention to important strategic
pursuits.”2
Good, Better, Best KPMG International Cooperative, 2013
2© 2014 Longview Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.
Tax Transparency Equation: Increased Transparencyn Tax sensitized data repository to calculate
provisions
n Report tax contributions country-by-country
and project-by-project
n Multidimensional drill down from
consolidated to detailed level
n Date stored for historical, actual and
planning/forecast timeframes
n Reporting and analysis tools to query any
cross section of data
n Flexibility to add additional inputs,
calculations and reports to meet future
transparency needs
Plus Increased Controlsn Standard out-of-box reports for US GAAP
and IFRS
n Automation and standardization ensure
global consistency
n Audit and workflow tools
n Flexibility to update process controls to
adapt to future transparency requirements
Equals Tax Transparency for CFO and Other Stakeholdersn Provides efficient and detailed level of
reporting
n Ensures quality and controls around results
n Future-proofing your ability to adhere to
new tax reporting and disclosure legislation
+=
Increased Transparency
Increased Controls
Confidence in Tax Numbers for All Stakeholders
Tax Transparency....About Time!
About Longview Tax
Longview Tax is a tax data platform to collect, report and own all the tax department data. Based on Longview’s proven expertise
working with a variety of companies and industries, including some of the world’s most complex multinational companies,
Longview Tax seamlessly integrates with any source system or tax point solution providing a data platform from which all of your
global tax data needs and reporting processes can be performed, including: direct or indirect tax data collection, provisioning &
reporting, tax planning and tax task management.
For more information please visit www.longview.com/tax
3© 2014 Longview Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.
Sources
1 - Tax Transparency Seizing the Initiative, Ernst & Young LLP, 2013
2 - Country by Country Reporting Adoption of Directive 2013/34/EU on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and
related reports of certain types of undertakings Chapter 9 http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/accounting/country-reporting/index_en.html
3 - OECD (2013), Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264202719-en
4 - Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Act, Section 13(q) to the Securities Exchange Act as adopted by the SEC in August 2012.
5 - The EITI Standard, July 2013 http://eiti.org/document/standard
6 - Publish What You Pay http://www.publishwhatyoupay.org/about/publish-what-you-pay
7 - Good, Better, Best KPMG International Cooperative, 2013
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