It is common to see large corporates creating their own in-house Tax Units. In most cases these units end up spending most of their time doing compliance work using spread sheets, or liaising with external Tax Professionals, and are not really able to unlock the full value of having their own internal Tax unit.
Tax Compliance is something that every corporate entity is subject to. It is not a cost that seems to go down, nor is it a cost that adds any value to the business. It is however essential to ensure that it is done correctly, because the cost of non-compliance, or submitting the incorrect assessment can be expensive.
REDUCE EXTERNAL COMPLIANCE COSTS
This does not mean that you fire your Tax Agent, but it does mean that you have the choice as to how you want to engage them. BRASSTAX incorporates the latest Tax Rules and can be customised to present the Tax Computation and schedules in virtually any way.
REDUCE TIME COSTS
Despite the advent of the Spreadsheet, Tax Compliance has traditionally been a very manual activity involving large amounts of calculations. BRASSTAX helps to eliminate most of the time required to perform these calculations, such as:
| Capital Allowances | These are automatically computed the moment that an asset, disposal or Hire Purchase Payment are entered into the system |
| Brought Forward Balances | BRASSTAX automatically rolls over all Brought Forward balances |
| Copy & Pasting | Information is automatically posted and cross-referenced between schedules as information is entered |
| Worksheets & Schedules | BRASSTAX treats all reports as bi-products of your data entry and automatically prepares them upon request in a matter of second |
| E-Filing | Typically requires about 30-40 minutes to complete. BRASSTAX reduces this time to just a few seconds |
TRACEABLE TO DETAILS
BRASSTAX provides the ability to trace back from most figures in the Tax Computation back through the various levels of computations to the source transactions (along with any attachments). This is important when reviewing Tax Computations, or when providing justifications to the Tax Department (LHDNM).
REVIEW AND JUSTIFY
BRASSTAX includes the ability to attach notes to almost any part of the Tax Computation. This means that decisions can be documented at the time that information is entered, or can be used to communicate ideas or instructions between team members. This can also be important when explaining/justifying transactions to the Tax Department (LHDNM).
ELIMINATE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH SPREADSHEETS
There are many potential issues with the use of spreadsheets to prepare financial documents. Here are some of the issues that BRASSTAX addresses:
- Cutting and pasting fields that can result in computations being over written unexpectedly
- Deleting cells can result in unexpected changes in the underlying computation
- Brought Forward figures must be manually transferred manually from previous worksheets, if these are wrong or have changed, this will have a major effect on the subsequent computations
- It is easy for anyone with access to the spreadsheet to change the underlying formulae, which in-turn will affect both the Current Year calculations and the Carry Forward computations
The issue with Spreadsheets can be more clearly understood, from numeric evidence. In his article “What we know about spreadsheet errors” (click here to view the article) , Professor Raymond Panko documents:
- Audits conducted on sample Spreadsheets by KMPG and Coopers and Lybrand, found that up to 91% contained errors.
- Examinations of Spreadsheets prepared by MBA students with 250 hours of experience showed that 24% had errors.
REDUCE RISK OF ASSESSMENT ERRORS
Having BRASSTAX perform computations and prepare all schedules, is just like having an extra staff member in the office. This allows you to separate yourself from the details of the assessment and focus more on the accuracy of the classification of information used in the the return, and the final computation.
REDUCE RISK OF HUMAN ERRORS
Importing information using Spread sheet imports from internal financial systems reduce the risk associated with human errors. This risk can be further reduce (or virtually eliminated), by used customised interfaces to directly transfer the information from the financial system(s) into BRASSTAX.
Manually transferring information into the Borang, or e-Filing is another area where mistakes are possible. BRASSTAX accurately transfers all information into the e-filing, or into the Borang (if the LHDN permits the submission of the printed form), which significantly reduces the possibility of human transposition errors.
