Corporate tax professionals' greatest challenges require forward-looking technology.

• Author: McIntyre, Irish
• Position: PERSPECTIVE

Corporate tax departments are facing an unprecedented barrage of new and changing reporting demands as a result of global regulatory shifts. To get a better understanding of the issues that corporate tax departments face, Thomson Reuters recently surveyed more than 3,500 tax professionals about their corporate tax challenges and technology. The survey results revealed a few key themes.

Compliance and Reporting

Forty-three percent of respondents cited compliance and reporting as their biggest corporate tax challenge. Tax departments are struggling to keep up with the growing reporting requirements as a result of new global regulations that require the collection, organization, and analysis of massive amounts of data from numerous systems.

Keeping Up With Regulations

According to the survey results, keeping up with new and evolving regulations is the single biggest challenge in compliance and reporting. Over the past year, companies faced major regulatory hurdles that require planning and preparation, often with incomplete or imprecise guidance.

* Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) created significant changes for employers, with new requirements for reporting 2015 health care coverage information to the IRS via Forms 1094 and 1095. The process requires unprecedented coordination and data collection between groups across their organizations.

* BEPS

At an October 2015 meeting with the heads of the G20 in Antalya, Turkey, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) finalized its base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) action plan, aimed at putting an end to corporate tax avoidance. The BEPS initiative requires multinationals with global revenues of more than (approximately $838 million to implement country-by-country (CbC) reporting for tax years starting on or after January 1, 2016, (start dates could vary) and filing within twelve months of tax year end.

* Financial Reporting Standards Businesses also faced changes and updates to financial reporting standards. For those groups adopting international financial reporting standards (IFRS), changes are coming for financial instruments and leases, impacting the local GAAP of many countries. Businesses need to ensure that financial statements are compliant with changing standards in the countries where they report.

Data Management

The survey findings demonstrated that the greater the compliance and reporting complexities are, the bigger the data management issues...