Future of Tax Insights series episode 4: Opportunities for tax value beyond the return

Transcript

Alina Achy
Welcome back to our Future of Tax Function Insight series. I'm Alina Achy and with me today is Shari Forman PwC’s Private Clients Market Leader. Shari, welcome and thank you for joining us today. In this series so far, we have spoken about the increasing complexity of compliance and changes that must be made for tax functions to be ready for the future.

And in this fourth episode, we'll explore the opportunities for Tax to create value beyond return and elevating the role that Tax plays in an organization. So let's get started. In our Future of Tax survey, we asked finance and tax professionals what they saw as the largest area of opportunity for tax functions to add value to their organization.

So what was one theme from the responses that stood out to you?

Shari Forman
Thank you, Alina It's nice to be here. It was that organizations want the role of tax to evolve. Rather than focus on reacting to issues and completing historical compliance, there is a strong desire to elevate the role that tax plays in the organization. Taxes impacted by every part of the business and the need for that engagement is acknowledged.

When we asked our recipients in the survey about what they see is the biggest opportunity for them / their tax functions to add value to their wider organization. The largest organizations answered as follows: 83% said proactive management of tax risks, 63% said tax optimization and 48% said a greater focus on business partnering, 48% said to provide eyes and ears on the ground and share developments with us. Getting far greater real time insights out of their compliance and reporting data is going to be key to achieving these goals.

Alina Achy
Understood. So what are organizations doing to transform tax to become more forward looking, to have a more forward looking discipline centered around insights?

Shari Forman
Well, one of the first things that we see companies do is look for ways to create capacity for their teams. One of the ways this is being done is by leveraging technology and automations differently to reduce manual processing so in-house tax teams can spend more time focusing on value added activities. One of the survey respondents commented “the level of automation should be prioritized to dispose freed resources on analytical procedures, building tax strategy and minimize tax related risks”.

The correct technology investment can automate processes and unlock real time data and insights. So your organization is making better decisions. With real time data and insights, as well as a more efficient tax reporting process, tax resources should prioritize their focus on business transformation. Now more than ever companies should be bringing tax to the forefront of every business and strategic conversation to achieve tax in business optimization.

Whether your organization is contemplating a restructuring, trying to drive broader digital or workforce transformation, or evolving the operating model, each strategic decision has tax implications that should be addressed and optimized.

Alina Achy
Okay, that seems like a fairly big ask for the tax functions. So how is PwC helping organizations achieve this?

Shari Forman
Sure, we work with our clients to focus on the following areas. First, reduce the length of time spent in-house on historical compliance, leveraging technology and automation to free teams up to focus on more value add activities. Some of this can be a quick win with technologies like Alteryx, which can automatically cleanse and map data or simple robotics.

Secondly, look at how technology can provide broader data insights. Enhanced modeling capabilities built into your compliance technologies can enable you to deliver real time, data driven insights to your wider organization for better informed decision making. Third, use tools like Power BI to interpret datasets in new ways. Our insights dashboards leverage your data in real time to highlight areas of opportunity, risk and value drivers for our clients.

And lastly, explore safely and securely generative artificial intelligence. Imagine being able to say “AI please draft me a board memo memo explaining the half year ETR and why it has moved since the year end”, an exercise that can be completed in a matter of minutes but provide insights worth far more than that.

Alina Achy
Thank you Shari. So what would be your main takeaway from this?

Shari Forman
Well, expectations today are high. Compliance and reporting has never been more complex and there is an expectation to keep up with an ever changing business and bring value through tax. When you invest in technology, leveraging real time data and commit to data driven decisions, you'll create the efficiencies needed in high volume areas to create capacity to focus on being a stronger tax leader and a better business partner who's making greater contributions to the organization's bottom line.

This is the time to reassess your tax operations for a stronger control of your data, greater strategic insights, and to ensure your tax function is a valued asset to your organization.

Alina Achy
Well, thank you Shari for your insights today. For more information on our human led tech powered Connected Tax Compliance approach, visit our web site. Thank you for joining us today. We hope you will be here for our next conversation, which will explore why it can be difficult to collect high quality compliance data in real time and how you can better achieve this.

Thank you.