With the help of a tax compliance management system (Tax CMS), you have an overview of all relevant tax types in your company along with optimised and integrated tax planning while benefitting from a lower tax rate. This means you can always be sure that you comply with all tax obligations and requirements laid down in the German Fiscal Code (AO) and individual laws and that you are prepared and confident about audits, such as a payroll tax audit or a tax audit. The tax advisors at dhpg will be happy to assist you in implementing such a tax compliance management system in your company and advise you on which processes are particularly worthwhile in connection with integrated tax planning and a tax CMS.
There are many areas of application for a tax compliance management system:
In particular, our tax advisors can support you in the implementation of a Tax CMS in the following areas:
Tax law is complex and its application error-prone – this alone justifies the development of a T
tax compliance management system. Above all, however, you need a contact person who understands processes and applications and can advise you at eye level. Who better than tax advisors who themselves are members of a medium-sized company and carry out exactly the same processes that you are involved with on a daily basis.
Our team is made up of many specialist advisors who have a profound expertise in their respective fields. This means that we have an expert on hand for each and every case, be it VAT, payroll tax or international transfer pricing. Nonetheless, there is a fixed contact person for you.
Tax law is not always easily accessible and many issues are extremely complex. It is important to us to support you on the way to integrated tax planning and not to hide behind articles, sections and subsections. We advise you personally.
It is in our advisors' DNA to scan the terrain on all sides for our clients. If interfaces arise with other issues outside of tax law, we consult a specialist colleague. Our range of services for you thus extends from tax advice to legal advice and all the way to IT services and, thanks to our integration into the CLA Global network, beyond national borders as well.
Would you like to get together for a personal meeting? We will be glad to arrange an appointment with you – no commitment necessary on your part – so that we can get to know each other. We look forward to your call or e-mail and to meeting you.
Tax compliance basically means complying fully and on time with applicable tax laws and reporting errors detected in a timely manner without omission. The tax authorities call on companies to create functional structures and processes in order to comply with their tax obligations. What sounds quite complicated at first glance is not witchcraft on closer inspection, however. A tax compliance management system, or Tax CMS for short, is an internal control system (ICS) for tax purposes. If properly implemented and applied, it can help with tax planning and protect against unpleasant consequences under criminal law.
Even a tax compliance management system can only work if requirements are clearly spelled out. Implementation therefore begins by specifying an individual tax strategy and tax planning for the company. This is followed by taking an inventory of existing organisational measures before existing tax risks are recorded, analysed and evaluated, for example with the help of a risk-control matrix. Based on this inventory, target processes are defined, linked to the IT applications in use and underpinned by technical instructions and guidelines. Regular training of users and creating an awareness among all persons who have an interface function to tax-relevant processes is particularly important. Finally, ongoing monitoring and continuous improvement of the tax compliance management system ensures that implementation also generates sustainable benefits.
Errors in declarations, incorrect assessment of the facts, failure to observe formalities, etc., often lead to annoying additional payments in the case of tax audits and special VAT audits. With the help of a tax compliance management system, you not only keep track of your tax obligations, but also protect yourself from possible penalties and fines. It supports you, for example, in checking the correctness of incoming invoices and the correct application of the reverse charge procedure, in which the recipient of the service is liable for VAT.
Wage tax is often regarded as a mere accounting item, because employers are not liable to pay tax themselves, but merely to meet tax obligations for their employees. While regular wage and salary payments are not critical from a tax point of view if processes have been properly established, payments in kind to employees or business partners very often lead to queries from the tax authorities due to the susceptibility to errors. In order to be on the safe side here and to notice significant breaches of the rules in good time, you can also use a tax compliance management system for the correct tax recording of company events or employee hospitality. In addition, it supports you in correctly taxing company cars, e-bikes, etc.
Proper accounting requires each transaction to be recorded individually in the accounts and each payment to be allocated to the corresponding invoice. For entrepreneurs, this requirement means that they have to book thousands of individual business transactions and assess them with regard to their possible tax significance. It is hardly possible to do all this manually due to the high volume of documents, especially since the information required for posting comes from various sources and there are numerous interfaces. Missing or out-of-date data, inconsistencies in databases, changes in data formats and many other imponderables have to be dealt with. In order to maintain an overview, we use modern analytical tools to examine large data sets and identify possible anomalies or inconsistencies. Such an analysis of mass data for tax purposes is also part of an integrated tax compliance management system.
The Principles for the Proper Keeping and Storage of Books, Records and Documents in Electronic Form and for Data Access (GoBD) have been in force since 2014. In 2019, the Federal Ministry of Finance updated the contents once again. In the Principles for the Proper Keeping and Storage of Books, Records and Documents in Electronic Form and for Data Access (GoBD), the tax authorities spell out their ideas on when bookkeeping is deemed to be proper. If these Principles are not observed, there is a risk that the entire accounting will not be recognised. By implementing a tax compliance management system, you can keep an eye on accounting deadlines and retention periods, achieve data security in document management and ensure clean archiving of documents.
Compliance is also a question of reputation and therefore requires the attention of the owners or shareholders of a company. The same applies to tax compliance. The implementation of a tax compliance management system offers several advantages in this connection: It supports you in tax planning and can help you to reduce your tax burden. At the same time, you always have the secure feeling that you are fulfilling tax requirements, complying with legal obligations and recognising and eliminating significant breaches of rules in good time. Last but not least, you are prepared for tax audits and need not fear any tax investigation.
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