The requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley and CLERP 9 have placed greater responsibility on the Board to ensure the implementation of strong internal controls around the recording and maintenance of accounting records and preparation of financial reports, including accurate disclosure of tax liabilities and expense.
Also, senior management needs timely and accurate financial information to make well informed business decisions, including the tax impact of proposed transactions.
Ideally, tax management systems should generate consolidated current and deferred tax positions based on financial data from general ledger, fixed asset and other systems with minimal manual intervention and processing.
Tax systems should contribute to cash flow projections based on PAYG and GST payments.
Brokers and investors place importance on listed companies being able to accurately forecast their dividend distributions, including the level of dividend franking.
Organisations that have a policy of providing benefits to employees need to have reliable systems and processes in place to track the value of these benefits for the purpose of preparing FBT returns and reporting the value of benefits on employee group certificates.
Businesses in certain industries, such as airlines, may require special in-house systems to track certain benefits, such as the provision of discounted travel to employees.