How digitalization is changing corporate income tax

Digitalization puts increasing emphasis on timeliness and accuracy for tax authorities.

Tax authorities around the world are using sophisticated digital platforms that require taxpayers to submit data in real time or near-real time. This is changing the way businesses collect, format and report tax information, and it accelerates their reporting and filing obligations.

“With digitalization, we all know that time will be compressed. And that’s the challenge for businesses,” says Siew Moon Sim, Head of Tax, Ernst & Young Solutions LLP, Singapore. It’s important for business to put accurant information into their system because tax authorities are reviewing the information quickly and have limited time to respond.

“For example,” explains Luis Beltran Farias, EY Tax Technology & Data Analytics, Mexico City, “a client being audited by a tax authority was given a very short timeframe to contest a $34 million liability due to presumed errors on the return.

“Although this authority has one of the most advanced digital tax environments, the EY data validation process is similar to the one of this authority,” Luis says. “So we were able to help the client identify and gather documentation that reduced their tax assessment by a substantial amount.”

Adds Jon Dobell, EY Global Compliance & Reporting Leader, Sydney, “Organizations will gain the ability to see deep into their tax-related data. This will help them spot trends, opportunities and manage risks and also enable them to manage their company’s global tax footprint much more effectively.”

Watch more in our video series on the future of tax