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Artificial intelligence and cloud services are here in big ways. But knowing the difference between tech trends that last and trends with uncertain futures is less art than you might think.
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Redefining indirect tax
Cloud solutions for tax professionals
Edge computing
Future-forward operations with edge computing
Indirect tax professionals have a career-shifting opportunity
So how do you get there?
Redefining indirect tax
You know process improvement is a reality. You know automation is music to your ears, but how GenAI and cloud services are transforming indirect tax is profound.
Since ChatGPT’s public introduction, an onslaught of additional AI tools has emerged in the market. Some from known vendors, and others brand new. Unsurprisingly, most professional services organizations started exploring GenAI use cases to evaluate and test their capabilities for use in research and automation. While teams are actively looking at their processes and figuring out their next steps, some notable stop gaps still exist.
Learning curves and misperceptions of new technology
Older systems that lack integration capabilities
Age-old processes
Lack of process documentation when senior staff leave
Process improvement requires an open mind
Automation and GenAI has serious advantages for tax departments, assuming teams are open to change. GenAI tools can help augment manual processes in game changing ways.
While a tax professional enters tax codes, any code that don’t match the source library, requires verification in the form of a pop-up window or dashboard. The tax professional confirms or corrects the entry.
“Certification verification”
Load a list of 5000 new products and watch in real-time as the tax solution sets the classification in seconds.
“Exception certification management”
Load certificates into the tax solution and watch it gather and store the necessary data fields in real-time, then apply the certificates to the necessary tax codes, and report the changes.
The aim of leveraging GenAI is to streamline and automate repetitive work tasks, ensuring precise compliance reporting. With manual tasks off their plates, many tax professionals will have more time to focus on higher-level insights, services, and critical thinking.
In The Total Economic Impact of Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE Indirect Tax study conducted by Forrester Consulting, the findings detailed that automation reduces errors in reporting by more than 75% which equates to a savings of $2.6 million in penalties and interest. Plus, the compliance team can save $494, 000 in gained efficiency with a centralized, cloud-based platform.
Cloud solutions for tax professionals
For some, cloud-based solutions are a boon for efficiency and out-of-the-box operability. Companies that aren’t able or willing to maintain their own data centers find third-party cloud software less costly than on-premises solutions. It sometimes makes more financial sense to let a third party manage the cybersecurity risk. But some companies have a “hard time letting go of their solutions behind their firewalls,” says Christian Jensen, Technology Specialist at Thomson Reuters. “They want to ensure uptime and once they are no longer capable of ensuring uptime or pointing a finger directly at someone, they get a little bit nervous.” And so, Thomson Reuters created a solution called edge computing.
Edge computing
Also known as cloud/on-premises hybrid solutions which are on-premises cloud services that reduce latency and improve computing performance. This is especially helpful when large volumes of data are being computed at once and require real time accuracy.
For example, edge computing allows retailers, manufacturers, and wholesalers to calculate taxes at the point of transaction while staying connected to a larger cloud-based tax engine that also computes updates, auto expands, and auto heals for reporting and e-invoicing in real time.
This is especially important as governments adopt new tax reporting timetables, and organizations need to stay up to date on reporting and compliance. The seamless flow of tax calculations maintains compliance and security standards in a touchless process, so your department isn’t working overtime to keep up with the data.
“You get to watch for anomalies on a dashboard and get alerted when corrections are made,” says Christian. So instead of a 70-hour work week trying to decipher changing tax codes, you can present a more strategic M&A position to the C-suite, or work on your golf game.
Future-forward operations with edge computing
Edge computing combined with 5G will enable real-time processing at an unprecedented scale. Organizations can deploy new solutions anywhere, creating truly distributed operations. Christian sees edge computing as the pre-emptive technology now and “quantum computing in the future” as emerging technologies continue to integrate solutions, solutions are modified, and companies readdress their strategies and financial sustainability.
Indirect tax professionals have a career-shifting opportunity
Even if you haven’t invested in modern technology in the last decade and are still working in Excel, you’ve reached an inflection point.
To use metaphor: Imagine your indirect tax processes as a vessel navigating treacherous waters. The tides of change are rising, with waves of government reforms, real-time reporting requirements, and GenAI automation tools crashing against the hull.
No matter how quickly you bail out the water, the leaks persist, and the influx of new challenges accelerates. It’s as if you’re trying to hold back a tsunami with a broken bucket. To stay afloat, you need to rethink your navigation strategy, patch the holes, and harness the power of innovation to ride the waves of transformation.
The pace of change hitting indirect tax is faster than your analog processes can keep up, and that’s ok. There are solutions that can shore up your proverbial boat, and get you cruising at a comfortable speed, no matter which direction the wind blows.
The need for transparent and real time reporting is only increasing. You need process improvements and automation to stay afloat.
So how do you get there?
Plan for change. The price you pay for getting up to speed is known as “tech debt.” It’s not inherently bad, but by waiting to upgrade your tax technology, your tech debt gets higher and more costly over time–just like in lending, where debt compounds over time.
The problem isn’t that you have tech debt, it’s what you’re going to do to remediate it. If you need to find the right automation solutions, how GenAI is making an impact on tax departments, or which cloud solution to get you up to speed, read the 2025 Corporate Tax Technology Report from Thomson Reuters Institute. The report will help you learn how organizations that are struggling to evolve from “chaotic” or “reactive” can reach a “proactive” stage by investing in the right technology.
By using solutions like Thomson Reuters® ONESOURCE Determination, organizations can change how they manage indirect tax. This will improve compliance and efficiency, while also allowing their tax function to be more strategic and help them deal with the challenges of today and tomorrow.
