Driving tax department efficiency and minimising compliance risks

Hear the full story from Kevin Escott, Senior Director, Technology Program Manager at JLL

One of Kevin’s biggest challenges is risk management. For global organisations like JLL, not being compliant, not having oversight, and not having the right controls in place can lead to fines, impact cash flow, and, ultimately, damage the company’s reputation. Being able to confidently control all aspects of JLL’s tax reporting process was a key concern, and it became more complicated as the company evolved.

Initially, the company was managing tax reporting on an in-country basis, but as it grew, there was a need to centralise operations, creating more efficient procedures and better oversight over how returns were being managed and standardised across the world.

Technology like Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE was identified as a way to transform how JLL managed its tax and financial reporting activities across the various regions in which it does business. In addition, JLL needed a reliable way to consistently manage e-invoicing mandates and mitigate any risks that might arise.

A lack of consistency across all regions meant that JLL had to try and interpret local regulations and requirements on a piecemeal basis, risking the chance of misinterpretations with minimal oversight and control, which could lead to costly compliance errors.

According to Kevin, JLL needed to find a partner that would help guide the company through these regional challenges. That partner was Thomson Reuters.

With a user-intuitive interface, global footprint, and 150 years of tax content expertise, Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE was the obvious choice. With out-of-the-box tools already in place to support in-country deployments, ONESOURCE was able to help the JLL tax team drive efficiencies and minimise the cost and effort of implementation almost immediately.

Working with Thomson Reuters allowed JLL to improve their end-to-end processes by looking at their own data, identifying potential pain points, and then designing a configuration within their global ERP solution to help standardise and simplify their operating procedures while ensuring they were meeting all regulatory requirements.

The partnership with Pagero, a Thomson Reuters company, also helped guide JLL through the evolving requirements for e-invoicing mandates around the world. A dedicated point of contact helps ensure that JLL can meet the changing regulatory requirements as quickly and accurately as possible. In addition, Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE provided greater visibility and oversight, enabling JLL to better manage their tax spend and leverage the reporting capabilities to track and monitor their global filings more effectively.

Now, with access to the depth of industry and sector knowledge of Thomson Reuters, JLL can navigate the complex demands of global tax mandates while continuously onboarding more countries. As the company rolls out the new technology across EMEA and APAC, it’ll gain even greater visibility and understanding of its tax spend.