Exemption Certificate Management in Sales Tax Compliance

Description

The policies and procedures your corporate tax staff implements for requiring, verifying, storing and retrieving exemption and resale certificates are critical in preventing mistakes or oversights that cost dearly during a sales tax audit, particularly when multiplied through an audit sample.

Unless your company has outsourced or invested in sophisticated certificate-management technology (and sometimes even then), human processes are essential. How reliable are staff in asking for and verifying exemption certificates? How dependably are certificates scanned or otherwise stored?

Retrieving a certificate demanded by an auditor on short notice may require both sound cataloging and thorough knowledge of the storage system. Insights from advisors who work with sales tax clients in a range of industries can help you tighten your own certificate management.

Listen as our panel of experienced state tax consultants offers best practices for more efficient handling of exemption certificates at every step of sales tax compliance.

Outline

1. Trends in state and local sales tax audits
   1. Increasing numbers, and greater frequency, of audits
   2. Rising demands for exemption and resale certificates
   3. Implications for an audit sample
2. Procedures for gathering and validating certificates at the purchase location
   1. Role of a formal company policy
   2. Required staff training
   3. How corporate tax department can lead and improve the process
3. Alternatives for storing certificates
   1. Evaluating traditional approaches vs. system/scanning
   2. Cost vs. benefit
   3. Need for formal company policy on how long certificates kept on record
4. Retrieving certificates when needed
5. Working with the technology in place
   1. Knowing how to use it to get the information/reports the tax staff needs

Benefits

The panel will address these and other relevant topics:

• Field staff training: How the tax department can work with employees in other departments to stay sharp on requiring and inspecting certificates from customers.
• Certificate archiving: In what format and where should certificates be stored, and for how long?
• Certificate retrieval: Anticipating the need for procedures to reliably retrieve a needed exemption certificate.
• Utilizing technology: Knowing the capabilities of your company's certificate storage system or outsourcer.

Upon completing this seminar, you will be positioned to fine-tune your company's approach to gathering, verifying, storing and retrieving exemption and resale certificates as a critical part of sales tax compliance.

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