Tax Data Analytics

Our Capital Allowances Data Analytics (CADA) allows businesses to gain quantitative insights and visibility on the status of compliance and process efficiencies pertaining to their tax fixed asset register.

CADA combines sophisticated data analytics software with explorative testing to uncover potential compliance risks and financial opportunities. Coupled with the vast experience of KPMG’s tax professionals, CADA could help make ATO reviews more efficient and cost effective, and can uncover potential tax savings.

KPMG’s CADA is designed to make this simple.

Questions to ask about your fixed asset register

• What confidence do I have that my tax fixed asset register (FAR) is accurate?
• Are there cash benefits trapped in my tax FAR?
• Is my tax FAR reconciled to my accounting FAR?
• How does my tax FAR benchmark within my organisation, amongst industry peers and the broader corporate environment?

CADA helps with:

• Immediate deduction: To determine if any assets can be fully depreciated at 100 percent.
• Nil depreciation rate: To isolate any assets that are not being depreciated.
• Nil Closing Written Down Value: To isolate assets that are fully depreciated and can be removed from the tax fixed asset register.
• Capital works: To determine assets that are subject to capital works to identify opportunities to move to depreciating assets, such as fit-outs.

KPMG’s Customs Data Analytics tool allows businesses to understand their customs footprint and gain increased visibility over their trade function.

KPMG's Customs Data Analytics is designed to identify if the data reported to customs authorities is incorrect through omission or error. Such errors can increase customs duty liabilities and expose the business to infringement notices, strict liability penalties and prosecution. Rather than wading through physical documents, KPMG’s methodology combines sophisticated data analytics software with explorative testing to uncover potential compliance risks and financial opportunities.

Questions to ask of your Customs Data:

• Have I maximised the use of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and other customs duty concessions?
• Are customs duty refunds available to the business?
• Do I have confidence that the declarations made to government are accurate?
• Are our brokers and service providers meeting their contractual obligations to us?
  

What insights can Customs Data Analytics provide?

• Refunds: Highlights shipments for further exploration of retrospective customs duty refunds.
• Compliance risks: Identifies irregularities and inconsistencies in the data reported to custom authorities.
• Valuation of goods: Assess valuation methodology against expectations.
• Trade lane: Identifies high volume trade lanes for freight negotiation.

KPMG’s Employment Tax Data Analytics allows businesses to gain quantitative insights and visibility on the status of their employment tax obligations.

Revenue authorities are constantly evolving their audit and compliance validation methodologies in line with the Government’s Digital Transformation Agenda. Data analytics and IT system reviews are leading to increased identification of errors in tax data. Our approach combines sophisticated data analysis with explorative testing to uncover potential compliance risks and financial opportunities.

KPMG's Employment Tax Data Analytics is designed to make this simple.

Questions to ask about your Employment Tax Data:

• Have you contributed the correct amount of Superannuation Guarantee on behalf of workers?
• Has payroll tax been accurately calculated and lodged in each state and territory?
• Have you correctly determined whether workers are employees or contractors and applied the correct tax treatment?
• Have you identified and captured all expenses that are relevant for the Fringe Benefits Tax return?

What insights can Employment Tax Data Analytics provide?

• Superannuation Guarantee (SG): Identify risks of underpayments or overpayments of Superannuation Guarantee by analysing payroll code configuration of ‘ordinary time earnings’.
• Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT): Test validity of manual data capturing for fringe benefits such as entertainment, subscriptions, taxi travel and study reimbursements.
• Contractors: Identify contractor payments which are at high risk of employment tax shortfalls.
• Payroll Tax (PRT): Verify that payroll tax has been calculated on the appropriate taxable wage items in each Australian state and territory.

KPMG’s General Ledger Investigator (GL Investigator) allows businesses to gain quantitative insights and visibility over the data captured within the business sub-system and general ledger (GL).

Traditionally many organisations devote valuable resources to manually checking transactional data that forms the basis of their tax compliance work papers. Tax personnel use varying methods to perform such reviews. Typically this line item analysis involves the use of heavily customised and complex excel documents, random sampling, and applying high materiality thresholds.

Given the volume of work required to prepare and validate tax returns, the ability to review and gain comfort over the veracity and integrity of the underlying transactional data is often limited by time and resource capacity constraints.

Key questions to ask about transactional data reviews:

• How long does the tax function spend manually reviewing general ledger and sub-systems to ensure correct tax postings?
• When did I last have the ability to interrogate large volumes of transactional data with customised and business specific tax testing?
• Have tax deductible expenses been booked to non-deductible accounts?

What insights can GL Investigator provide?

• Review tax sensitised accounts: Analyse expenditure previously treated as non-deductible. Identify any expenses which can be claimed for tax purposes.
• Oversight over the entire general ledger transactions: Data driven testing over the entire population of data now replaces complex excel, random sampling and materiality limits to identify incorrect tax classifications.
• Oversight of business behaviours: Uncover operational control weaknesses which may be more prevalent in certain business units or with certain projects and transactions that give rise to more errors.
• Governance: Test controls in place for tax coding and posting and demonstrate good governance in line with the ATO’s expectations.