Making headway on standardization
• Survey results show that companies are taking action to improve tax processes and controls by standardizing activities and systems.
• Respondents express satisfaction with current levels of investment in tax technology and process improvement. The majority of respondents have projects in progress in these and other areas such as better training for tax staff and tax strategy and operational reviews.
• Respondents report a high degree of standardization of processes and controls, particularly for compliance-related activities. Respondents’ finance functions are also actively engaging in transformation initiatives, but tax departments usually are not integrally involved.
• Only a minority of respondents say their companies use cloud computing. An even smaller group use the cloud for storing accounting or transactional data, preventing tax departments from using cloud storage for its benefit. It seems that the tax implications of cloud computing have not been thoroughly reviewed by those companies that use cloud computing, which suggests that the tax department’s involvement in cloud projects is limited.