How would you rate your organization’s performance in dealing with its sales-and-use tax obligations — best-in-class, industry average, or laggard? If you’re not sure, or you suspect you’re in that last category, you might want to take a look at a new report from Aberdeen Group that sets out to isolate the factors that distinguish the top performers from the so-so operations as well as from, let’s say, the seriously sales-and-use-tax challenged.

A big differentiator is the year-over-year difference in audit penalties and fines, according to the research firm. The top-performing 20 percent of the companies in Aberdeen’s sample scored a 50 percent decrease for the past 2 years, on average. Run-of-the mill operations achieved only 4 percent, and the laggards saw a 17 percent increase.

The methodology will be familiar to anyone who’s ever glanced at an Aberdeen report; predictably, survey respondents pointed to IT infrastructure difficulties as the main challenge for implementing sales-and-use-tax management, and, equally unsurprisingly, technology enablers figured large among the factors that give the best-in-class their edge.

But there are some real insights here, such as the top performers’ emphasis on performance monitoring; they’re much more likely than their competitors to track tax overpayments and the costs of negative audit results (including the labor costs of remedial work). The paper also offers a short case study and some action steps for raising your organization’s performance to the next level.

The report is available here (requires free registration). ###