Best Practices for Easing Tax Compliance and Your Workload

Do some of these challenges sound familiar?

• Inefficient processes for tracking expenses, including ones that mix the business and the personal.
• Too much time spent managing tax-related documents during the year and tax season, too.
• Missed deadlines for filing returns or paying quarterlies.
• Not having enough money on hand to pay taxes due to trouble managing cash flow.
• Challenges scaling expense and tax processes as headcount and regulations grow.

They’re all examples of the difficulties small and medium-sized businesses confront around taxes. And they all bring consequences, from fines and fraud risks to the inability to seize opportunities and grow. But, as our checklist illustrates, you can overcome these obstacles with preparation and technology that allow your business to track tax-related expenses, improve compliance, and reduce risk.

Best Practices for Tax Compliance and Expense Reporting

Learn 7 ways that small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) can strengthen their tax, risk, and compliance foundation without straining staff and resources.

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Adopting best practices like the ones below can make a company ready for compliance at a moment’s notice, instead of falling prey to mistakes during the year-end rush of tax preparation.

Unify your expense and invoice system

Having one cloud-based platform to track, report and approve expenses instead of multiple siloed systems keeps all your business-related expenses, receipts, invoices, and tax documentation in one place. An all-in-one solution that integrates with an ERP or other finance system provides a holistic view, increasing spending visibility, enabling policy consistency, and making it easier for employees to use. Compliance grows, efficiency increases, and tax preparation becomes simpler because you more readily know the state of expenses and cash flow.

Use digital tools and end manual processes

Manual processes consume staff time and energy, but quickly growing AP and finance teams have little time to spare. By embracing digital tools, cloud-based systems, and automation, your business can bring consistency to processes, reduce errors, and tighten up documentation while freeing employees and managers for more important work. Simplify compliance and tax management with automated solutions that capture receipts and invoices, prepare expense reports, and help budget owners monitor spending while notifying them of required approvals.

Recognize the tax implications of remote work

Recruiting good people is always a challenge, but the rise in remote work significantly enlarged the talent pool. Although it eased one problem, SMBs now face other challenges around expense reporting, compliance, and taxes, as managing employees in different regions or countries introduces new complications. But with an online expense and invoice platform, especially one that includes app access, your distributed workforce can report expenses anywhere, anytime. Automated solutions infused with AI also can uncover taxable benefits – think internet and home office equipment – no matter where your team works.

Build a culture of compliance

Employees are more likely to stay in compliance with spending policies – and the taxes involved – if they understand the importance of these policies to your business and don’t face any barriers to following them. Build a compliance-supporting culture by making policies and procedures clear and easy to follow and by having technology enabling that goal. With an automated system, AI can quickly give employees answers to policy questions as they arise, automatically check each expense against company policy and tax and other regulations, and simplify time-draining tasks like uncovering taxable benefits and valued-added tax (VAT) reclaim.

Team up with a trusted partner

SMB leaders have no shortage of responsibilities across every level of the company, and their to-do lists are only getting longer. Trying to keep up with tax compliance and the technology involved might prove daunting and beyond your time and expertise. A technology provider with expertise in finance, tax issues, and business processes can lighten the load and reduce the risk of costly mistakes. Trusted outside expertise can help you stay on top of spending and taxes, develop tax strategies, and navigate shifts in policies.

Learn more best practices

Get the 7 Best Practices to Make Tax Compliance and Expense Reporting Year-Round checklist to learn more about ways a business can simplify management of taxes and expenses, increase compliance, and lower the burden and risk.