KPMG has released VAT/GST software to help partly exempt businesses undertake their periodic exemption calculations for VAT returns.
Partly exempt businesses such as banks, insurance companies, investment firms and companies managing large property portfolios all have to wrestle with the exemption complexities to prepare their VAT/GST returns. The new software takes care of those partial exemption calculations and the determination of recovery rate percentages. It also provides detailed reporting and analysis, KPMG said.
“This is purely reporting software,” KPMG’s Geoff Morgan told AccountingWEB. “We initially worked with banks to get under the skin of the core functionality. Partial exemption is a niche, but it affects lots of companies.”
Tax authorities around the world have raised the stakes for partly exempt organisations with tougher indirect tax compliance rules and stiffer penalties such as the UK’s regime for senior accounting officers, who are personally responsible for submissions. More time and effort is required to prove the accuracy and completeness of partial exemption calculations.
Accurately documenting the underlying numbers can be difficult using a spreadsheet approach, as AccountingWEB members have pointed out.
“People still tend to do it in Excel,” Morgan confirmed.
“They may have fabulous ERP and accounting systems but they still have got to copy and paste information into Excel from all sorts of places. For some of the organisations we work with, these spreadsheets are monsters. We have seen some sizeable errors.”
The problem with partial exemption calculations in Excel is that issues can become embedded in worksheets that “no-one knows are in there”. Manual consolidation can also take so long that the filing deadline arrives before there’s time to analyse the figures, he added.
Prices are available on application to KPMG.