Thomson Reuters acquires Sabrix indirect tax technology

Source: Thomson Reuters website

Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today (16th Nov) announced that its Tax & Accounting business has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Sabrix, Inc, a leading global provider of transaction tax management software applications and related services. Headquartered in San Ramon, CA, with additional operations in Oregon and London, all 160 Sabrix employees will transfer into Tax & Accounting upon the close of the transaction, which is expected in December 2009.

“This acquisition fulfills our vision of delivering a comprehensive global solution for corporations in the area of transaction tax, especially companies with a multinational presence” said Roy M. Martin, Jr., President and CEO of Tax & Accounting. “Sabrix offerings, which cover rates and rules for 170 countries, will be integrated with our existing local transaction tax software and services to form a total solution for corporate customers in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe.”

Transaction tax, also known around the world as indirect tax, VAT, GST or sales & use tax, trails only corporate and personal income taxes in its pervasiveness among country governments.

“Sabrix applications can process an unlimited number of transactions, control audit exposure, and reduce the total cost of sales tax, use tax, and VAT compliance,” said Brian Peccarelli, president of Corporate Software & Services for Tax & Accounting. “Additionally, the Sabrix Managed Tax Service™ offers finance departments of small-to-medium sized businesses an outsourced transaction tax compliance service.”

“We have collaborated with Thomson Reuters for years,” said Steve Adams, president and CEO of Sabrix. “We look forward to working alongside the well-known and respected brands of the Tax & Accounting business, including ONESOURCE and Checkpoint®, so that Sabrix clients can continue to achieve compliance with confidence in the most efficient and effective manner possible.”

SG comment: This acquisition follows Thomson Reuters taking over Digita and Abacus in the UK, and previously acquiring CrossBorder (transfer pricing software) in the US in 2007. This now makes Thomson Reuters the largest provider (by far) of tax software and technology in the UK.

Deloitte's Abacus taken over by Thomson Reuters

By Simon Godley

Some major news this week in the tax software market. Deloitte (where I trained in the Andersen days) has struck a deal with Thomson Reuters to sell the Abacus tax suite of software products to UK / American giant Thomson Reuters. I actually did find out about this on Friday night last week, but has taken me a while to blog it.

Thomson Reuters now have a major position in the UK tax software market, as they can offer products for CT compliance, PT compliance, tax accounting solutions, transfer pricing along with a workflow tax management product. That has been some serious acquisiton growth on the part of Thomson Reuters over the last 2 years.

For the full announcement from Thomson Reuters, click here.

Tax advisers brand HMRC's move to XBRL 'strange'

Source: AccountancyAge.com

Tax experts have condemned the insistence from the taxman that corporate tax returns only be made in the future using the controversial computer language XBRL.

For accounting periods ending after 31 March 2010, corporate tax returns have to be submitted using XBRL, a language that tags financial data and allows comparability. The majority of corporate tax accounts are currently filed using Microsoft Word or Excel.

But tax advisers have described the decision to adopt XBRL as both ‘strange’ and placing an ‘unwanted overhead’ on small business.

Tony Spillett, tax partner at BDO Stoy Hayward, estimated the cost of implementing XBRL could be ‘tens of thousands of pounds’ per firm.

‘There’s potentially a lot of work to be done. There’s a lot of red tape and additional burden on business so that HMRC can make life easier for themselves. It’s a real unwanted overhead,’ he said.

He added the long-term shift away from paper filing was welcome, however ‘it’s the devil in the detail and the way the HMRC has used the opportunity to capture the data in XBRL form [that] is concerning’.

According to Kevin Salter, technology partner at Glover Stanbury & Co, the decision by HMRC to adopt XBRL as the required format is strange given so few firms currently use the system.

‘We have no choice. I don’t know what their rationale for going down that route is. Various representations have been made by accountancy bodies but they’ve chosen to go their own way,’ he said.

Salter said a contracted software house will implement the necessary change on behalf of the firm but expects support fees for the service to rise as a result of the new requirement.

Tax advisers believe the change to XBRL will mean HMRC has the capacity to mine data more effectively and could lead to an increase in the number of tax enquiries.

A spokeswoman for HMRC confirmed that if a return is not filed in the new format, it will be ‘disregarded’ and treated as not having been delivered.

She said HMRC has consulted with the profession over the change and is continuing to engage with the software industry.


SG comment: There are quite clearly some financial winners and losers within these proposed submission changes. The losers are the companies that have to adopt these changes, the costs of changing their systems, the penalties for getting it wrong, and knock-on defence work with HMRC from the numbers being 'tagged'. The winners will most likely be the Big 4 and practice from increased advisory and implementation fees, and the software houses from selling their accounting / tax systems to industry. It will be very interesting to see how this all gets rolled out over the next couple of years.

Tax Technology advice for large companies

There is a very good summary article that I noticed on the current situation on tax technology as it is affecting large businesses, now and in the future. It has been written for AccountancyAge.com by Michelle Quest and Bivek Sharma, both Tax Partners at KPMG.

This article is applicable to all UK Heads of Tax and CFOs. Read it by clicking here

Tax Technology Forum - 29th April 2009 at the IoD - Review

The first Tax Technology Forum, hosted by Talentpool Selection, was held at the Institute of Directors on Wednesday evening this week.

Following initial welcome drinks and opportunity for networking / reacquainting with ex-colleagues, the event got straight into the discussion on current issues and challenges faced in tax technology, and what we could expect in the future.

There was a panel of six experts, highly experienced in the field of tax technology and accounting systems, answering questions and queries from a room of 35 tax and/or tax technology professionals.

The panel was:

Andrew Wrentmore – ONESource Tax Provision, Thomson Reuters

Alan James – European Director, Vertex Global Tax Solutions

Graham Tilbury – Independent Tax Technology Consultant

Michael Camburn – Managing Director, Ryan & Company

Ilana Rinkoff – Director of Tax Risk Management Network

Gareth Scanlon – EMEIA Tax Performance Advisory Group, Ernst & Young


Questions raised included:

• My organisation is about to embark on a major finance transformation. We are looking to implement a standardised ERP system with a view to achieving tax automation. What have other companies done on this? We are looking for creative / visionary ideas which are currently being employed in the market.

• Under proposals introduced in the Budget, the Senior Accounting Officer will now be personally accountable for certifying that they have adequate accounting systems in place to ensure the accuracy of their tax computations or face penalties of up to £5,000 plus loss of reputation and Company fines:
- What is meant by 'accounting systems' – would this naturally include the tax technology/IT system?

• What type / size of organisation benefit most from employing an indirect tax solution?

• What are the expectations / predictions for the future in terms of how tax / VAT / PAYE technology will look? Are companies looking to automate tax to the extent they will be operating with a ‘touch of a button’ solution?

• I work in tax with a UK group. From a risk management perspective, what do you advise re filing of our documents / correspondence. What e-filing systems are available?

Quite thorough and well thought out answers were given from a combination of the panel experts. The Senior Accounting Officer personally accountable question was heavily debated, with some conflicting views on what we could expect from HMRC on this. This questions could have potentially filled the whole hour of discussion, rather than the 20 mins it was granted. This really does sound like it will be a major minefield for FDs / CFOs of large companies when the rules kick in, and it was likened to the whole Sarbanes-Oxley regime that came in a few years ago.

The question about the future outlook of tax technology and could we see a 'push of a button' solution was healthily debated between the panelists and the attendees, with the general consensus that this is slightly in the realms of Sci-fi rather than practical realism, and that international businesses are so complex than human input can not yet be replaced by clever machines.

Initial feedback from the event has been very positive:

"Thank you Simon for organizing the event, the event also clearly marked that even with the technology today and virtual communication, people like to discuss and share information verbally and face to face, thanks from Holland"

"A great evening Simon. Many thanks for organizing the event. I made a number of new friends and reconnected with some old ones too. Budget Note 62 seemed a big topic, and one that didn't fit into the time our session allowed, so I'm expecting to see plenty of debate here over the coming days once the Draft Finance Bill has been published and digested."

"Thanks for the opportunity to present; it was very worthwhile from my perspective and actually I have had quite some interest from people looking to “link-in” on LinkedIn which is great testament to such a networking event."

FDs / CFOs - are your tax controls adequate?

The Government announced a number of measures in this week's budget to ensure that businesses and individuals pay the right amount of tax and reduce the opportunity for evasion, avoidance or non-compliance. The clauses which I suspect will be mostly of interest to readers of this blog are:

- it will legislate for the publication by HMRC of the names of both corporate
and individual taxpayers who incur a penalty because they have deliberately
understated more than £25,000 of tax;

- it will establish a statutory requirement for senior accounting officers of major corporates to certify personally that adequate controls to prepare accurate tax computations are in place;

- HMRC will require those who have incurred a penalty for deliberate
understatement of over £5,000 of tax to provide more information about
their tax affairs for up to five years to ensure they have proper systems to be
able to make a correct tax return; and

- HMRC will shortly issue a draft code of practice on taxation for the banking
sector, along with a consultation document.


This will be quite a significant issue for in-house tax functions, and clearly means that the FD / CFO of a business has a personal motivation for shining a torch over the systems and controls that are in place to ensure that the tax computations process is solid, thereby delivering accurate CT returns to HMRC.

This may lead to companies upgrading and investing in better tax technology solutions to put in place greater automation over the tax computations process, thereby increasing accuracy and reducing risk of error through possible out-of-date spreadsheet methods.

This new budget development will certainly be a topic debated at Talentpool's forthcoming Tax Technology discussion evening, to be held at the IoD on 29th April.

Talentpool hosts Tax Technology Evening - 29th April 2009

Talentpool is sponsoring and hosting an inaugural social event for tax technology specialists, to be held at the London IoD in the evening of Wednesday 29th April.

Adopting a Question Time type format, it will be an opportunity for tax technology professionals to pose questions to a panel of experts on current issues affecting the sector, and what to expect of tax technology in the future.

This event will be very informative for those at an experienced level within the tax technology sphere, and large company Heads of Tax.

Interested parties who would like to attend should contact Simon Godley on 07771 762353 or e-mail: sg@talentpoolselection.com

There are limited spaces available.

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

If, in amongst this downturn that we are experiencing (which I think still has a few shock waves yet to hit us) we see tax jobs being cut, I think people in the very specialists roles will potentially be the safest. When I say specialist roles, I am thinking of areas such as transfer pricing, in-house tax compliance and tax technology.

Transfer Pricing as an area has just boomed over the last 5-6 years, and many more people globally have specialised in it, and have chosen it as a successful career path. There always seems to be a global transfer pricing conference being organised at an exclusive international location, attended by the best brains in the transfer pricing world. I think also because of the onus on compliance and documentation within transfer pricing, there will be a need for it irrespective of how well business is doing.

Which brings me on to my featured job of the week, which is a specialist transfer pricing role with an economics bias within a non-Big Four niche consultancy in London:

Transfer Pricing Consultant - Niche Consultancy
London £40,000 - £70,000, depending on experience
See More Details

Microsoft creeping into tax software market?

By Simon Godley

I recently saw an article announcing that accounting firm Tenon has signed a deal with Microsoft to supply their accounting software, whereas previously they had favoured Sage. Tenon has said that they are continuing to use Sage, but the Microsoft offering is 'better'. Tenon will use the Microsoft product for outsourced finance function, presumably for their clients.

This prompted me to look at the Microsoft site for the product. There are actually two sites - one for financial management software and one for Microsoft Office Accounting, which seems to be for smaller businesses. Both sites are quite impressive, with video sales pitches which give a very convincing overview of the products. When you look at the add-ons available (for the Microsoft Office product), you can add a payroll service for an extra £9.95 per month. This does all the PAYE and NIC calculations, and can handle e-filing. The basic MS Office Accounting product is free to trial for 60 days, and then costs just under £150 to buy (for one user).

There is no evidence of specific corporate or personal tax products as yet, but I guess that could be another add-on from Microsoft in the future. Their current offerings seem to be pitched to the SME market, hence the competition with Sage, so no direct product competition with the suppliers of larger group CT software.

It is a brave move by Microsoft, and a move into mature markets (ie US and UK accounting software), but that seems to the their strategy on products - see what the competition has produced, and then design something better.

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

This week I am revisiting and featuring the area of tax automation and/or tax compliance technology. Clearly a specialist area within tax, but one that seems to have filtered into multinationals that take tax reporting seriously. Consulting firms have developed teams within their tax offering that will purely advise multinational groups on how to improve and streamline their tax reporting and compliance processes, but are not looking to sell a specific tax software product.

Below is an example of this, being an excellent and forward thinking opportunity for someone with either a detailed tax compliance/reporting background from industry, or someone who knows their way around SAP/Oracle financial reporting systems:

Tax Manager - Tax Compliance Systems
London £55,000 - £90,000, depending on experience
See More Details

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

This week I am featuring two roles that both have a focus on US tax reporting. They are roles that come up quite often, particularly amongst the large US groups that have to follow the complex US financial reporting rules. Typically based within a European or EMEA head office, London or South East region, the roles are usually at Senior Tax Accountant/Manager level, and will mostly involve calculation of tax provisions under local and US Gaap rules, and possibly including both current and deferred tax. As you will expect, it is difficult to find many candidates that are doing this type of work, or able to do it, for two reasons. Firstly, it is a narrow/specialist sub-set of tax reporting, and follows complex rules, and so is quite difficult stuff. Also, many tax advisers avoid it to try to get onto the perceived higher quality, more interesting tax planning work. I think if you like tax compliance/spreadsheet work, and persevere and become good at it, then like many specialist areas of tax, it can be quite lucrative.


International Tax Manager (US Group) - Central London
£60,000 - £65,000 + Bens
See More Details


Tax Manager (US Group) - West London
£50,000 - £70,000 + Bens
See More Details

Tax Compliance Outsourcing - Web Seminar

International Tax Review, in association with Ernst & Young, is hosting a free web seminar addressing the latest trends in international compliance outsourcing. Register for free here. Then log in from your desk on Thursday February 21 from 10.00am – 11.15am GMT.

The panellists will discuss what lessons have been learned after 10 years of significant compliance outsourcing agreements and ask what today's potential outsourcer should be looking for when selecting a potential partner. They will also challenge what the future holds for outsourcing arrangements, in light of globalisation, cost-pressures and technology developments. This web seminar will be fully interactive with a Q&A session between participants and our panel.

Deloitte is 'moving tax forward'

Deloitte’s website now incorporates a debating room, which is actually a clever marketing tool for their Tax Management Consulting practice. It is video based, so you see and hear the views of some of the Directors and Partners of the practice. It is very informative, and highly targeted towards Heads of Tax of large multinationals who may be looking to automate their tax reporting and compliance. You can also hear a couple of case studies, one from Carmel Moore, who is Director of Pfizer’s European Tax Centre and one from Andrew Constantine, Head of UK Tax Compliance for Lloyds TSB. It is a very useful web initiative for Heads of Tax who are not sure about tax technology, or how to get the most out of it for their business.

To see the above, click here

Deloitte have been developing this area of their tax practice for years, and they have gradually added on consulting services to their flagship tax software product Abacus, which Arthur Andersen developed and started selling to clients in the late 80s/early 90s.

Having worked in tax for Andersen in the mid-90s, I have seen the history on this, and a few of my peer group from the Andersen legacy who have stayed with the firm through its transition to Deloitte back in 2002, namely Mike Roberts and Andy Gwyther, are now very senior guys within Tax Management Consulting.

Where will we (and tax) be in 50 years?

By Simon Godley

Reading through the paper this lunchtime, I had one of those 'What is happening to the world moments?'. This was mostly driven by the first article reporting a 19 year old boy in Nebraska who had been on a shooting rampage in a shopping mall, killing 8 people, and then shooting himself. Clearly this is the behaviour of a very disturbed person, however the comment that caused me to reflect the most was that his suicide note revealed that he 'just wanted to be famous'. Fame? I couldn't kill a fly without feeling tremendous guilt, but I can kind of see the logic here. The boy becomes obsessed with famous people, maybe he develops some sort of resentment and jealousy that they are famous, and the only way he can quickly have the perceived level of attention that you get when you are famous is to commit this atrocity. The fatal flaw in his plan - he never got chance to enjoy his very short lived 'fame'.

My thoughts then turned to the concept of fame. When did fame begin? My conclusion to this was when media started, when things were reported about people, when newspapers were written, and then fame possibly caught on a lot faster when people could go and see a moving picture - this is when you can really get to 'know' someone in terms of their looks and personality. Therefore, fame has evolved out of technology.

The next article was more revelations from HMRC and their breaches of security. The acting head of HMRC David Hartnett, being quizzed by the Treasury select committee, was putting the breaches down to 'systematic failure'. Sounds a bit like blaming technology to me.

Thirdly, how did the wife of the 'dead' man from the canoeing accident get exposed for potential fraud - someone had found a picture of him and her together in Panama, which had been posted on the internet, dated July 14 2006. His 'death' certificate is dated 21st March 2002. Once again, technology (ie the internet) playing a significant part in the process.

So the opening pages of today's newspaper reveal three articles where technology has played a significant role, two times in a very harmful way, and once in possibly a helpful way.

So what on earth has all this got to do with tax? Well, what about tax technology? Surely a good thing in the UK, for example, where tax and accounting rules become more and more complex. The idea of the tax compliance process being fully automated, with clever software that is coded into ERP systems, pulling out the relevant tax (and VAT) numbers and placing them in the correct fields of a tax computation. So where's the downside, is there one?

To digress slightly, I recently took a trip to France to buy some booze for Christmas, and decided to stay overnight in Boulogne. From the point of deciding to make this trip, the first time I actually spoke to another human being who was incidental to my trip was when I said bonjour to the receptionist of the hotel in Boulogne, after buying my booze. Everything I had to do up to that point, including buying a channel crossing and booking a hotel room was totally automated. So technology also removes chains of people, and hence removes jobs.

So I guess the big fear with tax technology is the impact on tax professionals' jobs. Going back to the troubles within HMRC, we have already seen 12,500 job cuts as a result of the Inland Revenue merging with HMC&E, and the plan is to cut another 12,000. This was highlighted recently in Taxation Magazine, with Mike Truman launching his 'Stop the Staff Cuts' campaign. As tax technology improves and becomes fully integrated into large PLC, are we going to see an evaporation of those working on tax compliance?

We have realised that we can't live without technology and computers, but hopefully we will realise that even though computers do clever things, and save us time, they have no common sense or imagination, something that only humans can possess.

Tax Compliance (in-house).........in a different location?

Over the last 2-5 years, some of the large groups (mostly UK PLC) have relocated their tax compliance team to a different location in the UK. Typically with a HQ tax function based in London, they have moved the CT compliance function to somewhere like, eg Bristol or Sussex.

I have spoken recently with a couple of tax contacts in industry, and I am not entirely sure of the rationale here, maybe I am missing something?

Looking at the cost side, which is always the main driver, there will be theoretically a lower cost (ie lower salary) if you have someone based in Bristol rather than London. However, the supply of skilled candidates in that location is vastly reduced, companies often find that they can't recruit someone within the budget, the budget gets stretched, and they have to offer a salary that is closer to London levels anyway. Whilst the role is vacant, they have the option of hiring a temp/contract tax person, but the cost of the this will be higher (due to premium hourly/daily rates for temps) than a full time person in London. There is also the not insignigicant recruitment fees for hiring the people in the new location, partly because they will struggle to get people to relocate in the same role.

Clearly the other main cost is the rent/lease of the space needed for the team. I don't have details of corporate rents, but it may be a significant cost reduction to have 4 tax accountants sitting in Swindon rather than London, I'm not sure. This could be where the answer lies.

The other issue is communication, which has much more of an intangible value. The question is whether a tax compliance person will pick up more relevant information, and therefore do a better job, if they are sat with the other group tax members, compared to being sat in a far off remote location. My feeling is that they would pick up relevant information quicker if they are sat with group tax in London.

The caveat to all this is that I am not a Head of Tax trying to stick to a tight budget, and no doubt I am missing several other issues on this subject.

Any comments / debate on this very welcome.

Tax technology gathers pace.........by Simon Godley

As IT innovation keeps developing, we find that computer technology becomes a more integral part of the tax process. In fact, it seems that companies are gradually adjusting to having most of the tax compliance process highly automated, with bespoke ERP systems collecting the relevant tax numbers from financial accounts, and throwing them into a tax return. For large multinationals with complex business operations, the use of tax systems can remove large chunks of man-hours from the year-end compliance work. This effect is also now feeding into the VAT / indirect tax arena, where a small number of tech-savvy VAT specialists are developing products to automate the VAT process for large business.

Whilst in the long run this could be bad news for tax accountants as their work load decreases, Talentpool is currently finding an increasing demand for tax professionals to actually switch into the area of tax technology.

The current tax technology market is broadly serviced by 2 types of organisation. There are teams in the Big 4 firms that advise multinationals on their tax technology requirements. Then we have the software houses that design, develop and market tax software products. There is now a large array of products to choose from for each area of tax, including specialist areas such as property taxes and transfer pricing. Some of the Big 4 firms have also developed their own tax software products, which they market to clients, and hence compete against the software houses.

I think it is only a matter of time before industry, particularly amongst the large top end FTSE 100 type companies, also bring in-house this tax technology know-how and expertise.