Go with the flow

I still recall very well what it takes to stay in control of your global tax obligations 😵‍💫. During my in-house tax days, I looked after different types of compliance. Corporate income tax, VAT, WHT, TP, real estate taxes, environmental taxes … the list goes on! Each year, the compliance mountain seems to grow steeper 🏔️.

The real challenge? Compliance roles and responsibilities are scattered across various stakeholders, depending on your tax operating model. It's a wild ride, from complete outsourcing to co-sourcing to full insourcing. And don’t even get me started on the variety of advisors – one for every country, or a regional/global firm playing the hero. And anything in between.

Then there's the interplay between central and local teams. Local finance teams are closest to the action, gathering data, drafting returns with advisors, and seeking central approval before filing. Sometimes, we have regional centers of excellence or shared service centers to centralize compliance. Central tax teams set the rules, install controls, sign off and keep an eagle eye on compliance KPIs and insights.

But here's the kicker: without rock-solid processes, things can go haywire. It's one thing to have a process blueprint on paper; it's another to operationalize it and ensure it's applied daily across all tax obligations.

Proactive tax leaders know the secret sauce: double down on process excellence. They get that operationalizing processes means making them structured, repeatable, and automated. The focus? Streamlining collaboration and ensuring a solid audit trail.