| Benefits |
How can a Web application benefit my tax department? | By utilizing Web technology, tax departments become less dependent on the individual workstation by shifting the processing to the application server, increasing processing speed and reducing the amount of network traffic. Users can also process returns and perform other tasks simultaneously. From an IT perspective, less time is required to upgrade and maintain workstations, resulting in lower department costs. Application server processing also improves scalability, allowing tax departments to scale and add servers for improved multi-user performance. As the number of users increases, you can add more computing power to handle application and database responsibilities.
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| Benefits | What does automated system intelligence do for me?
| Automated system intelligence, or SmartReturns™, facilitates the return preparation process by automatically providing the returns an entity is “likely” to need. For example, based on entity and tax attributes (i.e., partnership and nexus), the system pre-populates the desktop of each entity with the appropriate tax filing requirements by jurisdiction. The user is still able to add or delete returns based on their applicability.
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| Benefits | What does working in a Web environment allow me to do? | The design of CORPTAX compliance software provides for remote access capabilities on a worldwide basis. Tax departments can now prepare, review and report from anywhere, anytime – the only requirement is an Internet connection and access to your company’s intranet.You need no other software on your desktop or laptop in order to run CORPTAX compliance software. This architecture gives tax professionals the flexibility to easily handle remote processing for multiple tax departments or locations. The system also provides an efficient telecommuting solution.
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| Benefit | What is the benefit of one system, one menu?
| The setup for all domestic requirements, and international entities and operations is accomplished in one place. With a single integration system and menu, you can easily set up, select, enter data, prepare and review returns without launching or toggling between different systems.
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| General Questions | How is CORPTAX compliance software different? |
CORPTAX compliance software is a fundamental shift in architecture to a Web application. The system may appear and look like a typical software application developed for Microsoft Windows, but it’s not! CORPTAX compliance software is built to operate within and take full advantage of the Internet. Hyperlinks, and other browser-like navigation add simplicity for the user and it’s built to be more intuitive and offer seamless integration across functional tax areas. Although a significant portion of our CORPTAX development effort focused on connectivity and usability, we also focused on building in additional tax intelligence, e.g., SmartReturns™, SmartCharts™, and SmartAdjustments™. Tell the system what kind of legal tax entity you are, i.e., partnership, and in which what states you have nexus, and ETS will determine the tax returns and forms required for the entity to file.
Following are some of the features and functionality CORPTAX compliance offers:
- Familiar Microsoft Windows look and feel
- Easy to use Web functionality
- Global access from office, home, or remote locations
- Single menu structure across all modules – federal, state, and international
- SmartReturns™ - pre-populate appropriate entity filing requirements
- SmartCharts™ - streamline data entry and review
- SmartAdjustments™ - associate adjustments with selected tax types, entities, and industries
- Compliance Navigator provides a central place to work
- Desktop Navigator offers a central location to launch reports and calculations
- Flexible and customizable tax calculations
- Book-to-Tax worksheet data entry
- User-defined views for data entry
- Flexible company and data consolidations for international reporting
- Hot links throughout to facilitate quick navigation
- Built-in Import/Export Tool for formatting data
- Drill down from tax forms to review adjustments and source data
- High-speed processing
- Tax logic with more than 25 years of reliability
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| General Questions | | CORPTAX is the first fully integrated, Web-based compliance and planning tax software system that allows you to handle all of the different tax functions and duties from anywhere, anytime. The enterprise tax software system encompasses federal, state and international compliance and planning for corporate, partnership, Sub Chapter S, REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust), and RIC (Regulated Investment Company) entities all under a single umbrella. CORPTAX replaces the current industry method of relying on a combination of multiple software systems and manual processes.
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| General Questions | What products are available with CORPTAX? |
CORPTAX U.S. Compliance: A multiyear federal and state tax compliance and planning system that helps corporate tax departments manage their company's tax liabilities and comply with the multitude of complex laws and regulations. Complete with all federal and state income tax returns, extensions, and estimates.
CORPTAX International: International capabilities include Foreign E&P Adjustments, Look-thru Computations, Subpart F Income, Historical E&P, Income Sourcing and Expense Apportionment, Foreign Tax Credit Limitation, and FSC (Foreign Sales Corporation.
CORPTAX Partnership: Partnership capabilities include federal and state fileable forms, with the ability to enter data required to create, modify, and support user-defined allocation methods, and to select a base for the source of an allocation on one of four levels of detail:
- Schedule K-1 line item
- Activity
- Account
- Book and Schedule M-1 amounts
The system also tracks changes in ownership of partnership interests and maintains partner percentages.
Sub S: Sub Chapter S capabilities include required federal and state fileable forms, K-1’s, flexible and customizable calculations, and on-screen review from the laser printable forms.
REIT: The REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) system automates the tax compliance process for REIT’s, and includes the required federal laser fileable forms and supporting schedules. REIT performs all the asset and income tests required for tax advantaged corporations to quality for REIT status, including the 10% Voting Power Test, 5% Securities by one Issuer Test, and the 10% Value Test, saving companies hundreds of hours manually calculating the data.
RIC: The RIC (Regulated Investment Company) system can manage distribution estimates, tax gains and losses, financial statement analysis, extensions, returns, and planning. The system's central database contains task-specific RIC tax calculations and reports. Among the primary calculations and reports are excise tax distribution requirements and federal, state and local income and excise tax returns and other filings.
Insurance: The insurance system is a comprehensive and powerful insurance income tax management tool that integrates tax compliance, provision (FAS 109) and planning for a single-system solution. The Insurance system comes with than 150 pre-defined insurance specific reports and specialized industry calculations, including capitalization and amortization of policy acquisition expenses, loss reserve discounting, detailed loss utilization calculations for life-nonlife consolidations, and "bumping" calculations that may be required for prior year loss utilization in certain life-nonlife consolidations.
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| Information Technology (IT) Department Questions | Can CORPTAX function in an ASP (Application Service Provider) environment? | CORPTAX compliance software has the capability to operate in an ASP environment. An ASP delivery model is a pay as you go model. An ASP provides software access to a client via the Internet based on a software subscription fee. The service provider acts as a host for hardware, software and/or data.
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| Information Technology (IT) Department Questions | Does CORPTAX require dedicated servers? | Every corporate intranet environment is unique. In many cases, CORPTAX can utilize existing hardware and infrastructure.One application and database server are required. However, we strongly recommend a dedicated application server.
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| Information Technology (IT) Department Questions | What about firewalls and security issues? |
CORPTAX operates within a company’s intranet environment and therefore access to the programs and data reside on the inside of the corporate firewall and are protected by the internal corporate security measures undertaken within your organization.
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| Information Technology (IT) Department Questions | Will we need to secure an Oracle or MS SQL server database license with CORPTAX? |
CORPTAX is not pre-packaged with a database. If your company does not currently have a license for either Oracle or MS SQL server database, it will need to secure one.
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| Tax Department Questions | Does CORPTAX provide multiple levels of security? | Yes. With CORPTAX, tax departments can assign rights to specific areas (e.g., international), accounts, entities, or adjustments for different users. In addition, the audit trail tracks all changes to source amounts in the database by user and date and the system’s drill-down capabilities allow you to access the account numbers and trial balance information, so you can trace where amounts come from.
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| Tax Department Questions | How can I justify CORPTAX? | Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and built-in cost controls:
- System updates are performed generally on a single server at one location.
- The life expectancy of expensive tax department computer workstations and laptops can be extended because the computing power is only needed at the server level.
- Rapid tax application deployment: Because CORPTAX is a Web application, full deployment can be achieved quickly and effectively by implementing the application at one location.
- Decreased learning curve: CORPTAX is one system, one menu structure, and requires one setup for domestic tax, international, and tax provisions. New staff learn quickly and experienced staff do more in less time.
- Planning: CORPTAX is a multiyear system. Tax departments can easily create various scenarios using realtime data and perform analysis on multiple years of tax adjustments, attributes, and tax return information.
- Enhanced Control Over Information: Better integration means better data, less redundancy, less errors, and improved overall control.
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| Tax Department Questions | How does CORPTAX help my tax department? | CORPTAX greatly simplifies the complicated task of consolidating information collected by remote locations and personnel - facilitating access, data entry, and reporting corporate tax information in realtime from anywhere, anytime. It helps coordinate discrete tax functions and activities into a single integrated tax system platform. Better integration means better data, less redundancy, less errors, and improved overall control.
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| Tax Department Questions | How easily will I be able to upgrade to Web-based CORPTAX? | Migration to CORPTAX is virtually seamless using the backup/restore function included in CORPTAX. The backup utility creates a backup of your current data in a format that can be imported into CORPTAX. The data is validated prior to backing it up.
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| Tax Department Questions | How many years of tax software and data stay online at one time? | CORPTAX is a multiyear system. Tax data, adjustments, notes, tax provision details, and other data from previous years are instantly available for review. In fact, users can create custom reports comparing multiple years of data.
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| Tax Department Questions | What converts to Web-based CORPTAX? |
Conversion includes all profiles, Return batches, Custom Calcs, and GL Conversion Tables. For CORPTAX CS users, all database tables convert to CORPTAX.
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| Tax Department Questions | | CORPTAX is ideally suited for both decentralized companies with remote tax departments and personnel, and centralized organizations with discrete tax functions with a need to be highly coordinated and integrated. Additionally, it is the right software for companies looking to provide employees with a telecommuting solution.
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| Tax Department Questions | Will new features and functionality be added to CORPTAX going forward? |
Absolutely. CORPTAX sets the foundation for us to continue to deliver superior technology products to the marketplace for many years to come. New features and functions that do not exist in today's marketplace, such as Workflow, expanded planning capabilities, and more are being included in CORPTAX.
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| Tax Department Questions | Won’t actual software performance be slower than software run internally? | The performance of most of today’s software, including CORPTAX, is highly dependent on the hardware, bandwidth, data size, and many other factors. In general, with Internet/intranet products and applications, one of the biggest factors impacting performance is bandwidth. The more bandwidth, the more improved the performance is likely to be.
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| Terminology | |
SmartReturns™ is a type of automated system intelligence within CORPTAX. SmartReturns facilitates the return preparation process by automatically providing the returns an entity is "likely" to need. For example, based on entity and tax attributes (i.e., partnership and nexus), SmartReturns pre-populates the desktop of each entity with the appropriate tax filing requirements by jurisdiction.
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