A Guide to Corporate Tax Automation
How tax automation software reduces risk, manages common challenges, and helps teams enable a full transformation of the tax function
Today’s corporate tax departments face a growing list of challenges, including talent shortages, economic uncertainty, and regulatory changes. These hurdles can cause disruption and distraction from larger strategic work, costing businesses both time and money. Bloomberg Tax offers tax solutions to help you automate and modernize your entire tax workflow and keep pace with the changes ahead.
Tax automation topics
AI for Tax Professionals
Fixed Assets Automation
Tax Provision Software
Enhance your corporate tax strategy with integrated software solutions from Bloomberg Tax
It’s time to stop wrestling with cumbersome spreadsheets and manually debugging your calculations. Bloomberg Tax has best-in-class software solutions to modernize your entire tax workflow – from planning and data collection to calculations and compliance.
Today’s tax departments face a range of workflow challenges, including burdensome manual processes, high-stress deadlines, data quality issues, technology solutions that require significant Excel verification, and limited resources. On top of all that, the complexity of taxes, globalization, and an increasing data volume continue to make a tax professional’s job even more challenging.
This tax automation guide for tax professionals discusses the benefits of automating tax processes using an integrated approach to manage common workflow challenges as well as the key features and capabilities to look for when choosing the right tax automation solution – including how to make the case for tax technology to get buy-in in your tax department.
What is tax automation software?
Tax automation software is used to streamline complex tasks that have traditionally been done manually, such as data collection, calculations, reporting, and filing. When done manually, these tasks can have disadvantages and risks, including the possibility of human error, dependence on other departments for data collection, and inconsistencies in source system data.
By using tax automation technology, busy corporate tax teams can improve their tax workflows by transforming processes, integrating data sources, and streamlining access to critical tax information. Tax automation capabilities can help tax teams mitigate common stumbling blocks and become more efficient and agile in their ability to respond to unexpected changes.
For example, Bloomberg Tax Workpapers automates the process of pulling data into tax workpapers by using data connections to link source data directly into calculations. Integration with Bloomberg Tax Research also ensures easy access to the latest guidance, keeping you compliant without additional effort. With built-in formulas and logic reflecting the latest tax regulations, Workpapers ensures every calculation meets compliance standards and eliminates risk due to outdated or incorrect spreadsheets.
Challenges facing corporate tax departments
According to a survey of corporate tax professionals, tracking legislative changes and tax reforms are among their biggest challenges, along with compliance and data management.

Tracking tax law changes
Legislative changes cause an uptick in compliance efforts for tax professionals. These changes often require new forms, new calculations, new processes, and new data types – not to mention software updates. Because of this domino effect of regulatory and operational changes, 45% of our survey respondents reported compliance burdens as their biggest challenge.
Managing tax data
Traditionally, corporate tax professionals have manually uploaded, processed, and managed tax data using technologies like Microsoft Excel. Manually reformatting data is not only time-consuming but can also threaten the integrity of the data, because the steps involved in transitioning data from source to destination aren’t always straightforward and can require complex business logic to achieve the desired results.
Conducting scenario analysis and modeling
Planning, scenario analysis, and modeling help executives understand potential implications of tax reform and global changes to inform appropriate business strategies. However, it’s often difficult for corporate tax professionals to find the time to conduct these activities on top of their regular reporting and compliance responsibilities.
Integrating new technologies
Implementing new technologies was cited as a top challenge for 38% of survey respondents. Corporate tax departments can lack substantial technology budgets for enhancements and staff training and may not have staff who can manage a technology strategy.
The benefits of integrated tax automation solutions
For far too long, tax software solutions have been focused on the last mile rather than the complete corporate tax workflow. The data and calculations that power tax deliverables are trapped in redundant processes that are largely underserved by existing tools. In addition, most enterprise automation tools aren’t built to specifically serve tax professionals, so all tax logic must be updated and maintained by the organization itself.
This forces tax teams to use disparate solutions and waste time, whether that’s wrangling data from multiple business systems, translating intelligence, or manually entering rates and rules to perform calculations.
By using an integrated suite of solutions purpose-built for tax work, today’s tax teams can complete timely tasks more efficiently, regain control over the tax process, cut their reliance on external groups, and harness automation to transform their overall workflow. That’s why many corporate tax departments choose a software solution such as Bloomberg Tax, which creates an integrated tax ecosystem by tying all these tools together to maximize each part of the tax process.
Bloomberg Tax product manager Ellen Barker walks through use cases for time-saving automation capabilities. (2:00)
Choosing the right tax automation solution
All tax departments are different, so it’s important to choose the best tax automation software for your specific needs. However, there are key features and capabilities to look for when evaluating tax solutions.
Control, integrations, and flexibility
Examine how the solution will fit into your current tax department structure and resources – and look for a tool that the tax department can own, control, and easily integrate.
For dynamic but repetitive workflows executed within the tax department – such as working up book-to-tax calculations, for instance – it’s most useful to implement an automation solution that doesn’t require much, if any, help from staff outside of the tax department (such as those focused on IT), because depending on outside departments can slow down processes. Be cautious with software solutions that require outsourcing, because you can become dependent on the vendor for managing that tool. Ideally, the solution you select is one that your department can manage and control to better streamline your workflows.
Also assess whether the software is flexible enough to handle inevitable curveballs. For example, if you were to acquire a new entity, consider how long it would take to incorporate that entity into your process and integrate new tax laws into your calculations. The ideal automation solution allows you to stay nimble and should align with the longer-term goals and vision of your department and enterprise.
A focus on tax
It’s not enough for software to provide general business-oriented solutions. Make sure the tool you’re considering is designed specifically for tax work, as these processes are complex and require specificity and accuracy.
User experience
Make sure the software you select supports your broader vision for your department and has the ability to streamline your workflow (instead of making it more complicated). Some tools, for instance, require a high technical skill set to manage and use, while others have a steep learning curve. Consider how easy a tool is to use within your workflow – including whether you can stay within the suite of tools for day-to-day tasks, instead of navigating in and out – and consider how quickly staff can complete onboarding and necessary tasks.
Accuracy
Accuracy is everything for corporate tax professionals. The best tax automation solutions help you remove risk from your processes and minimize human error for precise tax preparations. When it comes to tax data management, automation can reduce manual mistakes; allow more than one person to work with the data simultaneously; and provide greater consistency, control, and traceability. Ensure the software will help you spend less time on error-prone, manual processes to focus more on value-add activities such as tax strategy, planning, and cash flow preservation.
Provider expertise and customer service
It’s not enough to just have access to automation technology; tax practitioners need support to implement those capabilities to fully maximize their benefits and efficiencies for their specific workflow challenges. Consider whether customer support staff understand the real-world tax and accounting issues you encounter in your work.
Many members of the Bloomberg Tax customer support team, for instance, are attorneys and CPAs who are deeply familiar with your complex day-to-day work.
Security and compliance
For data extraction especially, it’s important to select a solution provider with experience working directly with IT departments to configure the most streamlined way to securely extract data. The solution should also offer compliance workflow tools to help you track and gather the latest federal and state tax deadlines and forms.
Also consider whether an automation solution is a traditional desktop tax software or if it offers a cloud-based platform. Cloud-based tax solutions allow users to access data from any device with an internet connection and typically offer superior security compared with desktop applications. By encrypting and storing sensitive data in remote servers rather than on an unsecure computer desktop, cloud-based tax automation software does a better job of keeping data safe.
Making the case for tax technology
The best way to build a business case for tax automation is to have an operational vision for how your tax department should run and an understanding of how automation can help solve your department’s pain points. This vision can help stakeholders and leadership to understand your roadmap and learn how updated tax technology can help you get there.
Articulate your vision and the tool’s value
Once you establish your vision, articulate it and demonstrate the value that integrated tax automation software can bring to your company. Present the benefits of a tax-focused, integrated automated tool and how integrated technology helps tax departments better meet their business goals – even amid difficulties with staff acquisition and turnover.
For example, if your organization has been relying on Excel sheets that are maintained by a particular employee – and leadership thinks your department is getting by just fine – what happens if that employee leaves?
In contrast to the challenges that come with manual processes or disparate software, explain that software with advanced automation capabilities can help your tax department stay nimble and meet enterprise goals by automating and transforming the way you work.
What’s more, integrated solutions that are automatically updated to account for changes in tax laws and global compliance requirements allow under-resourced tax teams to efficiently manage their workflows – even when facing significant hiring challenges or the loss of institutional knowledge that results from staff attrition.
Note the scope
Because so many tasks can be automated, it’s also important to differentiate and prioritize tasks that can be automated versus the tasks that should be automated when you build your business case. Advise stakeholders and leadership about the tasks that should be automated, which include those that:
- Are repeatable and frequently performed
- Involve high opportunity cost
- Have simple decision trees
Make sure to account for the specific tasks within your department that fit these parameters. These are tasks for which automation provides a framework for analysis that then can reduce the need for time-consuming manual analysis.
Compare product capabilities
When preparing a business case for tax automation, it’s also a good idea to schedule product demos to better understand how representatives for different corporate tax automation software approach solving your challenges, and how these solutions may benefit your department.
Bloomberg Tax, for example, offers an integrated suite of tax research and software solutions that includes comprehensive global tax intelligence and powerful calculation software to give you the timely, accurate, and in-depth information you need to plan and comply with confidence.
Highlight key benefits and potential ROI
Tax organization leaders are looking for more control over their processes, better data traceability, and the ability to complete work without any last-minute scrambling. So, forward-thinking tax and accounting teams are turning to integrated automation technology to free up staff so they can focus on more strategic tax priorities, such as:
- Modeling tax legislation impact
- Federal, state, local, and international tax law changes
- Key business priorities (e.g., mergers and acquisitions, global expansion)
- Better analysis of existing activities (e.g., provision, compliance, and fixed assets)
Our survey of corporate tax professionals shows that, as tax departments make progress on digital transformation efforts, they’re starting to see the results.

It’s important to understand the return on investment (ROI) of integration tax automation software so you can make an informed buying decision. To make a strong business case for tax automation, demonstrate its potential to modernize your tax process and introduce greater efficiency with less risk.
[Download our Customer ROI Survey for data-driven insights about how Bloomberg Tax Research has helped tax professionals gain greater productivity, efficiency, and growth opportunities.]
Seamless integration with existing systems
Enterprise companies, for example, have diverse enterprise resource planning (ERP) landscapes and frequently must extract tax data from many different ERP systems. Bloomberg Tax’s software is designed to streamline data input from various source systems.
Streamlined workflows that boost efficiency
When gathering tax data, corporate tax teams may depend on other departments, which slows down data extraction. Automating the data extraction process streamlines related workflows and saves time by removing dependencies on outside departments and manual report generation.
Flexible, accurate modeling
Corporate tax professionals are all too familiar with financial close pressures at the end of an accounting cycle, or the added pressure to accurately gauge the corporate impacts of financial transactions such as mergers and acquisitions. A flexible, automated process can help tax teams create accurate models to understand how business decisions may impact corporate tax deductions.
Automatic tax law updates
New legislation can significantly impact corporate tax laws and regulations, so corporate tax departments must have reporting systems that can handle sudden changes without creating material weaknesses. Integrated tax automation software can help corporations remain accurate and compliant by automatically updating books and reports to include the latest tax laws and tax rates, as well as built-in depreciation calculations.
Add strategic value with unmatched automation solutions from Bloomberg Tax
In the ever-changing world of corporate tax, automation tools are essential for optimizing tax department processes and should be chosen carefully. The best tax automation tools are purpose-built specifically to help tax practitioners gain control of their tax and accounting processes, allowing for more time for strategic tax activities.
Watch our on-demand webinar, How the Tax Department Is Changing: Automating the Tax Workflow, to hear from our experts on the state of automation, opportunities for the tax function, and viable automation approaches.
Bloomberg Tax’s suite of integrated automation solutions is expertly designed for busy tax teams and can enable a full transformation of the tax function so you can spend more time on strategic and higher-level work – and, ultimately, make more informed decisions.
Ready to start minimizing risk and maximizing efficiency? Request a demo.