Other than the words “data breach” there are few terms that can inspire high blood pressure for IT professionals at telecommunications service providers like the word “COMPLIANCE.” In general, the reasons may seem obvious but they are probably worth stating. For example, non-compliance with corporate governance and regulatory mandates because of fines, damage to brand reputation, stock price and a host of other internal and external impacts can not only be costly, they can be catastrophic.
While dealing with all aspects of compliance are daunting, an area of particular concern is the proper calculation and business processes associated with the critical area of taxes. Indeed, characterization of this as critical might be a bit of an under-statement. Yes, telecom tax and regulatory fee compliance, because they do not grab headlines, are not sexy. However, they literally involve billions of Dollars, Yen, Renminbi, Euros, etc. This is a global issue since national, regional and local governments have always looked to the telecom industry for tax dollars to fund their operations.
On the service provider side of things this creates a significant operations challenge for telecom services providers. It is only getting bigger as the types of communications services explodes to cover not just traditional telephony, but now includes: VoIP, Unified Communications (News - Alert) as a Service (UCaaS), fixed and mobile wireless, converged networks, ecommerce platforms, and the emerging Internet of Things (IoT)/Machine-to-Machine (M2M) services and applications markets.
Taxes are and will be part of all of these offers which is why tax compliance is so important and broad ranging in that it encompasses everything from dealing with regulatory requirements to billing, tax calculation, filing and remittance.
The size and consequences/risks associated with tax compliance may be a big and extremely challenging but this does not mean that the telecom tax process cannot be efficiently and effectively deployed and managed in a manner that assures compliance.
If you are a telecom services provider who is struggling with tax compliance issues based on the expansion of your offers and fear your current OSS/BSS systems may not be up to what lies ahead, or if you are currently not in compliance, you should be interested in the webinar: “Telecom Tax Compliance: Learn the issues and how to put together a solution for your business.”
To be conducted live December 10, 2014 at 2:00 PM EST, you are invited to join me, Mike Sanders, Chief Product Architect, SureTax, LLC, Jonathan Marashlian, Managing Partner Marashlian and Donahue, LLC – The CommLaw Group, and JK Chelladurai, CEO, Onebill, Inc., in a detailed discussion of how to do telecom tax compliance right.
Subjects to be covered include:
- The realities of regulatory requirements
- Prioritizing limited compliance resources by targeting high risk, high consequence areas while maintaining competitive positioning among industry peers
- How to develop, implement and manage a “compliance risk monitoring & management” process
- Easy to implement billing solutions for invoicing and collecting taxes
- How to calculate telecom taxes easily and accurately, according to the proper jurisdictions
- Options for reporting and filing taxes and fees, including in-house solutions and outsourcing solutions
- How to return to compliance
There is an old saying that there are only two certainties in life, death and taxes. While they can both be fatal, at least when it comes to guarding against the worst outcomes when it comes to telecom tax compliance this should not be the case.
Edited by Maurice Nagle