DTS Blog

5 Questions Every CFO Should Ask Their Tax Department

Posted by DTS on Sep 14, 2021 9:07:41 AM

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Sales and use tax is a buried expense that costs businesses dearly! If you would like to know if your organization is bleeding money or taking on too much risk, we suggest you ask your tax team the following questions:

1. How Much Sales Tax Do We Pay to Vendors?
If you do not know this number, it’s impossible to know if you are over or under paying. 

2. How Much Have We Invested Over the Last Five Years to Ensure We're Paying the Correct Amount of Tax on Our Purchases?
To realistically determine this amount, you need to consider all of the following:

  • Software implementation, maintenance, and hosting costs
  • Fees paid to consultants for reverse audits and/or general consulting
  • Audit interest and penalties paid on tax deficiencies
  • The value of unrecovered tax overpayments

3. How Do We Know Our Sales and Use Tax Automation is Working Correctly?
If you don’t have line-level visibility into your tax results, you simply won’t know until it’s too late.

4. What Percentage of Our Monthly Spend is Regularly Reviewed for Tax Accuracy and How Many Hours are Spent on That Process? 
This should identify how much risk you are taking on and what type of ROI you are achieving on such efforts.

5. What Amount of Audit Assessments and/or Reverse Audit Fees Have we Paid Over the Last Five Years? 
Based on these expenditures, what was done to ensure these errors are a thing of the past?

If you don’t like the answers you were given to these questions, you should call us at 678.566.3740 or email info@dtstax.com. We can immediately help you maximize savings and mitigate risk in this area—and you will no longer be in the dark.

Topics: Insider