Corporate Tax Departments: Lessons From the 2022 Tax Provision Season

In 2022, corporate tax departments – already dealing with a persistent lack of resources – had to adapt tax provision work and control frameworks to account for changes based on tax policy enacted over the last few years. With the Inflation Reduction Act and OECD Pillar Two changes taking effect in 2023 and 2024, respectively, the complexity surrounding the tax function won’t end anytime soon. These policies, coupled with staffing and resource challenges, will make it even more important for tax departments to maintain and follow internal controls in the 2023 tax provision season.

Managing Internal Controls

A tax office is only as strong as its accountability structure, and a strong control environment allows the tax function to operate more thoroughly, accurately, and efficiently. As companies adapt to policy changes and face new requirements and tighter deadlines, building and maintaining reliable control frameworks can help address issues like base erosion and profit shifting. While strong control frameworks are required for public companies under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, private companies can benefit from implementing similar internal controls. Taking a more rigorous approach to internal controls can enhance organizational accountability, reduce fraud risk, and improve reporting. Private companies can also enlist third-party service providers for support in establishing a control framework.

A business is ultimately responsible for managing whatever tax framework it chooses to build. Even if an internal tax department outsources provision and tax return preparation work to a third-party service provider, it should ask its vendors the right questions and flag items that could result in control issues, such as significant transactions like mergers and acquisitions. Involving the tax department in transactional decision-making will help leadership stay informed and avoid potential tax liabilities and penalties. Further, quarterly controller meetings between internal tax departments and external service providers to discuss recent and ongoing transactions, lessons learned from past activities, and relevant tax issues, as well as each party’s responsibility in addressing them, can help companies develop and maintain effective control frameworks.

Maintaining Successful Tax Processes

As companies grow, management inevitably becomes more decentralized as local teams are established to handle region-specific operations. These smaller teams might not have the tax expertise to manage local obligations, such as timely filing returns and statutory audits and remaining compliant with transfer pricing. That leads to financial statement risk and cash tax exposure, complicating calculations of tax provision and taxes owed. Decentralized teams also create concerns for the corporate tax department, which must ensure that local offices are meeting their tax obligations.

Companies can combat those challenges by adding more oversight to local finance teams. Although it would be ideal to employ regional tax professionals to oversee and report into the overall tax function, ongoing shortages of experienced employees makes staffing those positions difficult. For departments unable to hire in-house regional tax professionals, outsourcing specific tax functions like global tax compliance and requirements to third-party tax service teams allows the internal workforce to focus on regional oversight.

Obstacles Facing Technical Functions

Strong control frameworks have become more important for tax departments as technical tax functions have become more complex. Because of continual changes in national and international tax policy and shifting financial responsibilities resulting from economic uncertainty, tax departments have faced their fair share of obstacles in the past year.

Changing Tax Legislation

Between the implications of federal legislation like the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and changes to corporate income taxation in numerous states, tax functions have had to adapt to many new tax laws in recent years. The TCJA eliminated the graduated corporate rate schedule and reduced the top U.S. corporate rate to 21% from 35%, and changes in state law have resulted in corporate rate reductions. While some of those legislative changes ultimately reduce tax liabilities, they impose on tax departments the added responsibility of monitoring and maintaining compliance as evolving laws continue to affect companies’ total tax liability and tax provision computations.

Looking ahead to 2023 and 2024 tax reporting, businesses must navigate how new minimum taxes introduced in the Inflation Reduction Act and the OECD’s Pillar Two framework might affect their tax positions. The U.S. corporate alternative minimum tax applies to companies with U.S. presence that have book income greater than $1 billion for three consecutive years. Once subject, a company must make adjustments based on current-year income to calculate if there is an additional tax. The global minimum tax introduced in Pillar Two also has a revenue threshold, but it applies only if individual countries have enacted laws to conform to the Pillar Two framework.

Companies that are close to those thresholds should have plans in place for what may happen if they grow beyond them and become subject to the tax requirements.    

Multinational corporations in scope for the Pillar Two global minimum tax will need to pay at least 15% in taxes on profits made in all countries. Although the tax is designed to avoid double taxation by applying a top-up tax to bring the total amount of income tax paid to the minimum of 15%, multinational corporations could be subject to double taxation if jurisdictions do not implement the rules consistently.

All those legislative and regulatory changes add complexity to the computation of taxes owed and the tax provision, straining corporate tax functions that lack adequate resources and knowledge. Consulting with an experienced tax service provider can help tax departments avoid costly risks, penalties, and restatements stemming from material weaknesses and financial statement errors.

Understanding Complexities Presented by Valuation Allowances

Tax consultants can be especially helpful to tax teams in analyzing valuation allowance considerations. Because of economic volatility, many companies have had to revisit their profit and loss operating forecasts this year. As a result, some have changed their positions on whether the deferred tax assets (DTAs) on their balance sheets can be recoverable in the future, making tax provision and liability estimations more complex. Also, the TCJA allowed for the indefinite carryover of net operating losses and interest limitations, like those under Internal Revenue Code Section 163(j), that were generated post-TCJA. That makes the proper documentation and prediction of DTA realization more important because there is theoretically no expiration date for some. In practice, ASC 740 requires companies to apply a valuation allowance to any DTA that will likely not be realized in the near future to reflect a more accurate valuation of the business.

The TCJA amended IRC Section 174 to require the capitalization of certain research and experimental expenditures, which can further complicate when and if a valuation allowance is required. Determining how to apply a valuation allowance is a complex process that requires careful judgment. For small tax departments without robust technological resources, determining when a valuation allowance is appropriate and how to apply it correctly can be difficult.

Taking Advantage of Tax Technology

Today’s tax departments are charged with doing more with less and might still be relying on spreadsheet models, which can be prone to errors and difficult to maintain, for income tax accounting.

Many companies have turned to tax provision and automation software to overcome those challenges. Tax software can help teams be more accurate and complete in their traditional tax functions, enabling employees to dedicate more time to strategic tax processes. It is also important to thoroughly train tax professionals to ensure technology is used to its full capacity. Tax departments often encounter budget obstacles in building the business case to add technology. Although some business leaders are concerned about the resources needed to integrate tax technology, the benefits of tax software can reduce costs in the long term by boosting efficiencies.

Over the last year, tax departments learned a lot as they dealt with increasing complexity. Recent policy changes have added to that, and we expect more of the same in the year ahead. But 2022 taught tax professionals that with proper control frameworks, improved processes, and tax technology, teams can manage challenges and mitigate risk with improved accuracy and efficiency. As obstacles persist in the near term, we expect tax functions equipped with the right resources and support to thrive.

Written by Michael J. Williams and Daniel Newton. © 2023 BDO USA, LLP. All rights reserved. www.bdo.com