Global tax experts share insights at Vertex Exchange Europe 2018
European CEO joined Vertex tax experts, partners and clients in Amsterdam to explore the latest trends in international taxation and automation
Transcript
Tax technology provider Vertex hosted a two day conference in April 2018, bringing their experts in tax and technology together with their partners and clients. European CEO joined them to learn about the tax compliance challenges that multinational businesses are facing, and the trends in technology and automation that are helping them manage.
This highlights video will give you a taste of all the different themes that the Vertex Exchange delegates explored; you can dive deeper into them in our Vertex Exchange Europe 2018 playlist. We’ll be adding even more videos over the next several weeks, so please go and subscribe to our Youtube channel to be the first to watch all our latest updates.
Danny Vermeiren: Vertex Exchange is all about exchanging experiences, especially with our valued customers: show them what we’re working on, and getting a lot of input from them.
Bernadette Pinamont: This is my first time at our European Exchange conference, and I’m really looking forward to networking with my European Vertex colleagues, as well as the attendees that are here, to really understand some of the challenges that they are facing to bring back to the office and the tax research team.
Mattijs Overbosch: The biggest challenges: like everybody else, you need to do more with less. The real solution there is try to do less with human work and try to automate as much as possible, your standard processes.
Belinda Buvens: The biggest trend that is affecting us is, all the tax administrations around the world are looking at eCommerce. Everything that is happening over the internet.
Okko Koorn: The world is changing. eCommerce – our type of business – is changing. Taxation is changing. Compliance is changing.
Mattijs Overbosch: For us, Vertex was in the end the obvious choice. It was not only the most flexible product that we found on the market, but also the one where we had the most confidence in that, not only would it help us now but also in the future.
Belinda Buvens: They’re very collaborative in how they work together with their customers and clients. And I feel that they’re always trying to help you to get better in direct tax compliance.
Okko Koorn: For us as a company, for me as a financial administrator, it takes away a huge burden. If we make sure that the data is correct, then Vertex will take care of the rest.
Alex Baulf: The event has been fantastic; a really good turnout this year. People from across Europe and the US as well. So it’s been interesting to learn about different tax departments, different tax technology strategies. The challenges faced by a lot of these professionals, and also seeing how they’re using, deploying Vertex tools.
David Deputy: I’m the new products guy, so I’m involved in taking innovations in the technology sector and in the business models that we see in the world, and bringing them to the domain of tax for our customers.
So you think about the cloud, you think about blockchain, you think about AI, and you think about big data.
Those forces coming together, being deployed for the governments and for the corporate business models, are impacting the tax department. So we’re on top of these trends and bringing the best thinking to our customers, and building products around these technologies to help them compete in the digital world.
Danny Vermeiren: I’ve been presenting a lot of sessions, and that again creates such a big opportunity to get feedback from the audience and continue to make better and better products for our customers.
Alex Baulf: I’ve been learning a lot about AI, robotics, blockchain. You know, all of these developments, tax authorities will be using all of this technology in the coming years. But it’s also very exciting, because so can taxpayers. That’s going to be one of the exciting challenges to the industry, and something I look forward to being part of.
Bernadette Pinamont: Tax departments are under more scrutiny than ever before from the c-suite. So my recommendation to companies that are struggling with running scenario planning is to consider some of the latest technology on a data management solution for tax, to help them access the data they need, better governance and control over the data, and better real time data to do real time scenario planning.
David Deputy: I get energised when I see the opportunity to reduce the burden on the taxpayers. And the opportunities to raise revenue for the governments, to create the shared commons that’s so important for our civilisation.
It’s important for us to be on the cutting edge so we can help our customers adopt these new technologies and new processes for their efficiency.