A vinyl window company in Holly, Michigan, apparently didn’t notice when $1.7 million disappeared off its books over a 3-year period. But the IRS noticed when Pamela Blodgett, the company’s controller at the time, somehow inexplicably forgot to mention on her 1040 an increase in her income by coincidentally the same amount. more

More and more companies are revamping and rationalizing their tax IT infrastructure with an eye to getting more value out of their ERP and business performance management (BPM) systems by “tax sensitizing” them. I asked Christopher Iervolino to explain some of the nuts-and-bolts challenges in these projects. Iervolino is senior managing director at Itec Inc., a financial software consulting firm. more

This will only throw fuel on the already fiery discussion of the United States’ global tax competitiveness: A report just released by the European Commission reveals that the sharp decline in corporate income tax rates in the European Union’s member states, ongoing for the past 15 years, is showing no sign of slowing. Despite the global financial crisis, five states have reduced their statutory rates this year, and none have increased them. Even Greece managed to trim its top rate, from 25 percent to 24 percent. more

In a recent post, I shared some suggestions from Jeff Moore, director of complex property tax with Thomson Reuters Tax and Accounting, about the steps tax directors should be taking right now to influence their organization’s property tax liability. Moore very kindly followed up with these additional action steps, which read almost like a Top 10 best practices list for effective corporate property tax management: more

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. more