My mental health after spending 10 hours on data gathering for a tax audit

Repeating the same thing over and over again can be soul-destroying. That is why investing in audit-readiness pays off…

We have all had this situation. A lengthy questionnaire from the tax authorities drops into your inbox. You know what that means: hours and hours of data gathering, orchestrating + managing + chasing (!) stakeholders to provide input, preparing draft answers, have them reviewed and signed off, all while racing against the clock. I am euphemistic here, as typically an important chunk of the joy comes from doing deep dives in Excel sheets (and the comments in mini font size made in cells). Or enduring the torture of searching for info in archived emails 😱🤢.

No need to further explain. You all know what I mean.

There is however a fairly easy remedy for this. It’s called investing in audit-readiness.

Take a proactive approach towards audit trails and defense files. Make it part of your day-to-day.

Three useful tips that can be applied in all your tax operations (compliance, business support, projects, OTP, …):

1️⃣ All your tax operations require a process. Every process should have an audit trail (WHO / WHEN / WHAT / HOW / …). Foresee as well defense files + contemporaneous documentation of what happened.

2️⃣ There is always a lot of back-and-forth between tax and internal / external stakeholders. Focus on properly capturing comments and Q&A. This means: not in Excel comments, not in the body of an email. Instead: captured in an easy-to-retrieve and consult format. Documented. Centralized.

3️⃣ Invest in data-readiness and storage. Across all your taxes. For all your entities. One single source of truth. Structured (verticalized for tax). Invest in search optimization, and analytics. Yes, why not, AI on top of it.