In recent years, tax agencies have been increasingly turning to business process re-engineering (BPR) to enhance operational efficiencies, reduce risks and increase taxpayer compliance. BPR offers intelligent analysis – an in-depth assessment of challenges, processes, risks, and controls to aid developments and align practices with a tax function’s goals and strategy. These solutions help save resources and time through driving reduced manual processes and replacing them with automated processes and workflows.
Identifying Key Controlling Factors
While creating process efficiencies, key stakeholders across layers of an organisation must work collaboratively throughout the implementation. The ‘process explanation’ phase is key where areas with higher flexibility become visible and create opportunities to make improvements. This entails discussions about operational challenges faced, processes, risks, and controls. A tax function must map existing processes to the new capabilities that the solution offers. A Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) solution leverages SAP’s TRM platform based on S/4HANA to provide configurations that comply with tax-specific laws, regulations and business rules. Invenio enhances these COTS solutions to accommodate a variety of processes within the overall design. They are also supplemented with an array of tools and methodologies to assist in the process.
Interpreting Tax Laws and Regulations
Tax policies have evolved rapidly in recent years, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) adoption of VAT in 2016 to broaden the region’s tax bases and reduce reliance on revenue from natural resources. As a result, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain have already aligned and implemented online systems to explain and encourage the filing and paying of VAT. It is important to implement solutions which are designed to understand and adhere to the regulations of a particular jurisdiction. The solution also needs to bring higher levels of efficiency across the tax function’s business processes and operations. Invenio is the first SAP partner to implement an SAP S/4HANA core tax administration solution in two countries, one of which is in the GCC region and a third already in flight.
Meeting Future Requirements
A customised system can leave you relying on one implementation partner for all future support. A tax function needs a highly configurable solution, with the flexibility to operate within the legal framework and remain agile and flexible to meet future operational requirements. The ideal solution should be designed with key processes which cater to a tax administration’s needs, not the other way round.
Invenio’s experts have successfully implemented a state-of-the-art COTS solution to help Fiji Revenue and Customs Services (FRCS) improve business processes and enable online taxpayer services, voluntary compliance and self-assessment environments. The New Tax Information System (NTIS) enables access to 24×7 online services, reducing the need for taxpayers to visit FRCS offices.
