One of the most frustrating challenges for business owners and managers is keeping track of sales and use taxes. It requires keeping track of thousands of tax rates that are constantly changing. Business owners and managers have to calculate sales and use taxes correctly based on product categories and where products are being bought and sold, completing tax forms and paying taxes on time every time. This is a time consuming effort and most businesses do not have the time and resources for this accounting task.
As a result business owners and managers turn to sales tax services firms and get their entire sales tax function automated. These firms are handled by skilled and experienced accounting professionals. Automating the calculation of sales and use taxes and forms completion to the actual transfer of funds to various state and local revenue departments gives you the opportunity to:
• Outsource another business process.
• Freeing your tax and finance people to focus on higher level functions.
• Make more concrete contributions that will aid your company’s growth and success.
Automation of sales tax helps alleviate the tedious and time-consuming process of sales tax compliance and turns it into a fully automated solution.
Benefits of sales tax services
When an accounting professional performs end-to-end automation of the sales tax compliance process, it helps reduce exposure to tax liability and compliance costs. Specifically, accounting professionals offer full automation of tax calculations, tax filings, and tax payments and back-office services supporting the entire process. Some of the benefits of sales tax services include the removal of burden of tax compliance through:
• A defensible audit trail.
• Up-to-date compliance with tax rule changes.
• Automatic tax filings and automated clearing house (ACH) payments.
Additionally, an accounting professional will help you and your business, reduce the total cost of compliance and mitigate risk and can help you forecast tax obligations with greater accuracy. Other accounting help available through sales tax services:
• Defensible audit trails for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley section 404.
• Reduce the possibility of audits.
• Avoid costly tax penalties.
• Tax compliance research.
• Tax planning and transaction modeling.
• Customization in tax jurisdictions, goods and service codes, use codes and associated tax rules.
• Timely returns and reports processing.
• Forms updated monthly, quarterly or as needed.
• Up to date tracking of electronic forms.
• Timely payments (reduces the risk of penalties and interest).
• Comprehensive management of liabilities.
Obtaining sales tax services will free tax and accounting staff to focus on the revenue producing end of your business.