How a holistic approach elevated Dow’s tax function

In just four years Dow Chemical Company’s tax function has gone from being described as a “black box” by company leadership to an established strategic partner within the business that has saved millions of dollars.

Since 2018, EY teams have been working with the Dow Chemical Company to create an intelligent tax function – instilling the agility required to quickly respond to and adapt to disruptive forces, be that from internal or external change.

When the collaboration began, Dow’s leadership found itself facing a wave of challenges. It was engaged in major M&A activity, as well as scrambling to keep up with a fast-moving operating environment — all while facing the increasing sophistication of the tax authorities, who were demanding ever greater transparency and real-time access to digital tax data.

Together the teams created an intelligent, leading edge tax function – one designed to align tax with the business, elevated to a much more strategic role, with efficient, effective management of risk around the globe. Supported by a detailed process design and leading-edge tax technology.

This podcast will delve into how EY and Dow’s tax team achieved this transformation and the challenges they had to meet.

Key takeaways:

• The initial areas that required improvement and evolution in the Dow tax function
  
• Why a holistic approach was the best course of action for Dow
• The processes, technologies and analytics that were introduced to increase efficiency and reduce risk
• How EY worked to boost internal capabilities at Dow to help ensure the new program was sustainable
• The feedback on its new tax function – internal and external – that Dow has received

For your convenience, full text transcript of this podcast is also available. Read the transcript.