With this environment as a backdrop, we sought to identify trends and benchmarks on
the following fundamental questions:
• How are tax departments changing their operations to address emerging economic,
business and regulatory trends?
• How are they progressing on aspects of governance and performance such as
strategy, risk management and measurement?
• How are they approaching process and technology investment and improvement,
including the impact of cloud computing?
• How are they addressing the pressure to more effectively resource how they do their
work?
• How are they responding to rising tax authority scrutiny and demands?
The survey now shows that tax departments have made good progress in several of
these key areas. However, in a rapidly changing business and regulatory environment,
the results also suggest that there is still work to do if tax departments are to meet the
dual challenges of effectively managing risk while providing more effective, real-time
support to business activity.