Sales Tax Outsourcing

I hear stories on a daily basis about how a company has been let down by their sales tax outsourcing vendor.  Some of the scenarios are quite surprising.

• I hear about outsourcing relationships where payments are managed by one company and the returns managed by another company.  It seems odd that two separate contracts and two different vendors are necessary.  Who do you call with an issue?  Who is really managing the compliance process?  Seems like ownership of the process shifts back to the company that is outsourcing the process.

• I hear about vendors that require every return to be approved before the vendor will file the return.  Sounds good on the surface, but when you have one business day to review and approve a hundred or more returns, can you really effectively review that many returns?  Shouldn’t you have faith that your outsourcing vendor is preparing the returns correctly?  If you don’t trust your vendor then you shouldn’t be outsourced at all.  Seems like a way to shift the penalty risk back to the company that is outsourcing the process.

• I talked with someone recently who had worked with another sales tax outsourcing vendor for close to two years and could not identify their primary point of contact.  This vendor’s process for issues resolution was for the client to enter a trouble ticket and then the “customer support” team would communicate via email to attempt to resolve the issue.  The client had nobody they could call when or if there was an issue.  Sounds like a technology company that is applying a help desk support process that is common in the software industry to a high touch service like sales tax outsourcing.  Is that the type of service you really want?

I believe people have grown accustom to receiving this poor level of service and it just becomes part of their reality.  They jump from outsourcer to outsourcer hoping to find better service and it’s all the same.  An impersonal factory, that attempts to automate the process, and remove people from the equation.

There are options…much better options.  If you’re looking for a better alternative, then perhaps we should talk.  Learn more about the TaxConnex Difference.