The critical conditions for success
The importance of indirect tax has increased over the last couple of years. While the rates for direct tax, corporate income tax, are decreasing, the rates for indirect tax keep rising. At multinational companies we’re easily talking about amounts of over 5 billion euros of indirect tax flowing through the books.
According to big4 surveys, the related control mechanisms are still inadequate. Not only can an error in the accounts lead to major additional tax assessments and substantial penalties, with amounts like these, it can be devastating for the reputation of a listed company. We are talking about extremely large amounts of money that lack appropriate control, but because KPIs have never been developed for this particular purpose, the risks remain outside the CFO’s field of view.
The Indirect Tax Function is aware of the fact that it is understaffed and that budget is too limited to optimally execute its tasks, but they often don’t know how to change this and get it on the agenda of the CFO.
It’s essential that change comes from the organization itself. An advisor can repeat this over and over, but if it isn’t carried out within the organization, by the people who actually have to work with it, nothing will change. And that deadlock must be broken.
What should be done to actually break it?
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