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How technological disruption is accelerating change in tax functions
In this edition of “Tax and Law In Focus,” Simon Hobbs interviews Clare Franklin, EY EMEIA Tax Transformation Leader, and Ross Hay, Head of Global Tax Operations at Takeda.
Related topics
The speed of technological disruption is having a significant impact on the global tax landscape. On one hand, it is enabling organizations to improve the operational models of their tax and finance functions – from streamlining certain processes through the use of automation, to enabling compliance with filing and reporting requirements. On the other hand, tax authorities are increasingly using technology to gather real-time or near-real-time tax reporting data, putting pressure on tax departments and adding to the risk of controversy. Organizations are having to strike a fine balance between seizing these opportunities while meeting these challenges.
Key takeways:
- Advances in technology are giving tax and finance functions the opportunity to improve their operations.
- Adopting new technology and new processes can help organizations remain compliant with a constantly shifting global tax landscape.
- With authorities increasingly using technology to gather tax data in real-time, organizations need to ensure they aren’t behind the digital curve.
For your convenience, full text transcript of this podcast is also available.
Moderator, Simon Hobbs
This is the EY podcast Tax and Law in Focus, sharing leadership insights from one of the world's most successful providers of advice to international C-suites. Hello, I'm your host Simon Hobbs in California. And today we focus on how digital is driving a speed of change that is almost overwhelming. In the fight to stay competitive, technology is now transforming virtually every business function. But for tax departments, the change will be nothing less than revolutionary. That's because governments are investing very heavily in their own tax-collecting IT. Tax authorities are constructing the ability to demand real time information from corporations. Governments want to plug directly into the big data sets of every big business. They want to determine the tax liability of every multinational in real time. And governments will share that real time data with tax authorities in other countries. Corporations are behind, they will have to accelerate their own investment just to catch up. The deeper question for tax managers becomes this: whether this is their digital opportunity to fundamentally reimagine what their teams do. Can their teams use the technology to generate such a volume of smart insights that they themselves propel tax managers to a greater soft power within their organizations, a power that will enable them to better drive their own strategic initiatives through their businesses?Before we go any further let me be explicit: conversations during this podcast should not be relied upon as accounting, tax, legal, investment, nor other professional advice. Listeners must consult their own advisors.
Joining me now from Zurich, Switzerland, Clare Franklin, EY’s transformational tax leader for Europe, Middle East, India, and Africa. Clare, welcome to the podcast.
Clare Franklin
Hello, Simon.Simon
Also joining us from Zurich, one of Clare's clients, Ross Hay, head of global tax operations at the Japanese pharmaceutical giant Takeda, whose R&D efforts focus on oncology, rare diseases, neuroscience, and gastroenterology. Welcome Ross, welcome both of you to the podcast.Ross Hay
Hi, Simon. Hi, Clare, thanks for the opportunity to talk with you today.Simon
It's great to have you. Clare kick us off, if you would, with a bird's eye view of how digital has impacted the tax landscape over recent years. And, I guess, how COVID-19 is impacting that change? I mean, I'm assuming this is an area that is speeding up with this disease, as we see across the economy.Clare
Yes, that's right. So if we think sort of externally, so like the rest of the world, technology has become better, faster, cheaper, and with people becoming much more familiar with being digital and the technologies, this also has applied to the tax and finance world. So from a tax environment, really much more digital, much more technology being used. If we then think about inside the organizations, so inside the tax functions, we have seen really a transition over the last years from sort of, using Excel was the sort of first piece of doing things a little bit digitally, into using tax technologies to do calculations for tax purposes. And then moving through into much more modern digital technologies. So things like robotics, machine learning, which are now being used in tax, and being programmed into some of the other data source systems of companies.Now, you mentioned COVID-19, what impact is that having? Obviously, everybody has had to go to work from home pretty much overnight back in the spring. So from a tax and a technology perspective, that has been a real accelerator. It's meant that everybody, going to suddenly work from home has really got very quickly upskilled in some of those technology and digital skills, which previously it might have been easy to shy away from. And so really also ensuring that people can get the data and the technology pieces which they need at the right time has been really critical.
Simon
Yeah, I mean, digital as I think we've all found, is both a brutal disrupter and a springboard, oftentimes to our future. If you could characterize it, what emotion would you say lies behind the drive for change that you see in your industry?Clare
Well, I would say like any journey of transformation, there's a slight mix of fear and excitement, right? So, reimagining what a tax function is, and how that can change and the journey towards that changes. It's a bit daunting, it's something that needs to be thought about. But at the same time, you need to be bold, and you need to really take those steps, those initial steps at least, to really embrace the digital disruption that is happening, and really sort of jump onto that train and ride along with it.Simon
But it's fundamental, isn't it? I think what we're saying is, the days are gone when tax managers sat in quiet corners, filling historical documents, it's no longer a linear process of self-auditing and filing paperwork for processing. I mean, how do you imagine the future when every piece of a business's data are obtainable in real time? Because that's a different place, isn't it?Clare
It is a different place. And it has been, quite a quick journey from the days, as you mentioned, of sort of doing things on pieces of paper. What will the future look like? Well, definitely more of a sort of a real time approach to tax and the data that tax needs, will enable, I think, a better sort of business partnering approach for the tax functions. So that will mean that the businesses will understand more about tax. And that will mean using technology that the business and the tax will partner better together, to really understand what the data represents, that they're using and generating. And also then using some of the time that they should gain by having better tax technology, insights will enable them then to work, perhaps even partner with tax authorities in order to really clarify any of the tax positions within their filings or within their numbers.Simon
Ross, let me bring you in here, on that subject. I've heard you describe your job at Takeda as having to satisfy many stakeholders, both externally and internally, which I think is a really interesting framing because I guess, like many tax professionals listening now, you may represent very well the core backbone of a functioning profitable business. But you're not, in your case, at its pharmaceutical heart making the medicines or meeting the patients.Ross
No, that's right, Simon. And we really do have to think when we're thinking about a tax compliance organization, and the tax function more broadly, who our stakeholders are and, for us, at Takeda, we always put the patient at the center of what we do. So if we're trying to frame that as a tax function where we're not meeting patients on a day-to-day basis, how can we consider that maybe, in a broader context, and, being able to use technology means that we can get better insights on our data, and we can perform compliance more efficiently and at lower cost. Overall, that means that we save the organization money, and it gives us more dollars to spend on R&D, and developing new medicines.I first joined actually eight years ago as the first tax technologist at Takeda and it's really seen huge amounts of change. So if we think about the projects that we were involved in eight years ago, it was about taking Excel spreadsheets, maybe making them more controlled. One of the first projects I was involved in was taking Excel and moving towards a tax provision solution, which encompassed the entire organization. And that took two years in itself.
We're now in the situation where we're looking more holistically at technology, and processes as a whole. So in more recent times, we've moved into having a tax compliance center where, all of the tax compliance around the world is performed by a team in a single location. We've moved to a single outsourced provider, we're now using a global technology for the tax provision that integrates with Hyperion. And that's something that's been a platform that we've been able to leverage with the acquisition of Shire, two years ago now, and we're looking at, how we can leverage other technologies that are being used within Takeda, both within the finance function and the broader organization itself.
Simon
Would you regard yourself as a first mover?Ross
That's a great question. So whenever I have a conversation with Clare, and we're talking about developments in tax technology, I always tell her, I don't want to be a guinea pig. And, I think that there can be some risk in looking at technologies which are not fully developed or fully tried. But maybe Clare, what's your perception of what we're doing at Takeda with respect to other companies?Clare
Well, you're right, Ross. I know, no one wants to be a guinea pig. And, that's, very important from our side as the advisor as well. We want to make sure the sort of decisions you're taking in terms of transforming or going more digital technology focused are the right ones at the right time. So I think that probably, we work together really well, in terms of bouncing ideas off of each other, what's new? What are you doing internally? What's happening, perhaps, as you say, already coming from finance, what's appropriate to do now? What are things to put on that, wish list, for maybe next year, or let's wait and see a little bit around what other technology developments happen? Because as we know, they happen so quickly, and let's see, with the sort of the ongoing environment of what's happening in the business to layer on top of thatwhat's the right time to try something different? And how to go about it? So definitely, from my perspective, it's a really good way of working together, sort of being honest and open around what are things to try? And what could the outcome be? What’s the potential impact for your business?Simon
But to be clear there, would you say that you are, in a sense, pulling Ross as a client to systematically leapfrog to the latest new technology? Or in a sense, do you get pushed by the market intelligence as to what else is happening on both sides elsewhere, and it's a kind of lumpy necessity, if you like.Clare
So I'd say it's a bit of a blend, to be perfectly honest, it's not one or the other of those, and the ways in which the technology can be used in tax is quite, it's quite broad. So you can go from fairly simple things, which are very effective to really fairly complicated things, which may end up not being as efficient as you hope they were. So the technologies change fast, we and Ross have a good understanding of what we think is going to be the right one to use at the right time. So making sure that the recipe, if you like, is correct, and that it ends up with the right results is really important.Simon
But I think it's really important, Clare, before we move on, to underline how you frame this issue for your clients, and for everybody else, that the future of tax isn't just digital, it's fundamentally about how you get people in an organization to cooperate with a new technology, it's much more holistic.Clare
I couldn't agree more. It's people run the technology, you can't have the technology running itself yet. And certainly not in any of the sort of near future. So absolutely, the people change side of the sort of transformation journeys is critical. It's really essential as well to remember that you can go so far with some of the technologies, and you still will need to use the skilled brains of the tax professionals to interpret what the data is that you've been able to analyze and to get into an easier, readable way of looking at things more quickly. But really, you definitely need the people change to embrace that and to still be around to make that interpretation.Simon
And how's that worked in practice for you, Ross?Ross
So I think the real value that I have with the interaction with Clare is that she's able to help me with the challenges that other individuals within the organization or externally are putting to me. So as an example, we've had a number of iterations now of our tax technology roadmap. And I'll come to that roadmap with a number of challenges that I need to achieve, whether that's reducing the cost of compliance, whether that's making sure that our processes are going to be ready in the future, and our organization is going to be ready in the future to handle real time reporting. And Clare is then able to talk through with me both her experiences from what she's been doing with other clients what she's seeing emerging in the technology environment, and we can have that real time discussion about , what the options are. So that she's not telling me what I should be doing we're coming to a conclusion together around what the right direction for Takeda is.Simon
Let's flip over and focus on the government side of the equation. Clare I have two questions for you. ‘A’ is it true that South American and European governments are leading the drive to plug themselves directly into the Big Data servers of multinationals? And ‘B’ is it also true that many of the upgrades are primarily targeted at the collection of indirect or sales taxes?Clare
So, good questions, I'll look at them in order. So the first question, yes, it is true to say we're seeing really the governments and tax authorities from Europe and South America really sort of leading the charge in terms of getting their requirements from the taxpayer, in sort of digital formats. So if we think about Europe, so some of the real early movers, there have been countries like Spain, Russia. And then if we think about South America, definitely Brazil is well known as one of those sort of early movers in terms of really demanding sort of high-quality digital submissions of tax information. Plugging them into the big data servers of multinationals? Not yet. I'm sure they would all like to do that and be ready to do that. That is still a way off. Again, different countries have probably different timings on their own sort of roadmaps. But they're certainly sort of on the way towards that as a sort of an end game.The second question, is it mainly around indirect tax or sales tax as sort of the initial piece for them to be rolling out their sort of digital approach? Yes, very clearly, yes. And there's a good reason for that. It's because sales tax, indirect taxes are transaction-based, it's easier to understand the tax implication on a sort of transaction by transaction, line by line approach for those indirect taxes than it is for the direct taxes, the corporate taxes, where actually you need to sort of do a sort of period’s worth of calculation, looking at profits and losses, so the actual transactional element of direct taxes, their corporate taxes is not so easy to do on a sort of a transaction basis so you would not do that. So yeah, definitely, indirect taxes leading the way. And the leaps and bounds that are being made by the governments in this respect, have been really, really fast.
Simon
And how does that work in practice? I mean, how do the tax authorities typically notify a corporate tax manager that they've got this greater transparency to comply with? Is it like, a big bang event, if you like? Or is it more a slow evolution? I don't know, through incrementally tougher audit requests?Clare
So this is also a question we should ask Ross, so from the sort of the taxpayer’s side of things. But , typically, there’s a direction of travel, which is being led by some of the governments but also some of the other agencies like the OECD, who set out sort of where they think the direction of travel should be around some of these sort of larger topics, one of those very clearly around transparency, that sort of fair share of, of tax to be paid. Now, that's, that's one element of it. And the other is different and more challenging tax information requests, tax audits, again, on a different country by country, sort of timescales. So countries don't all evolve at the same time. But really, that direction of travel is very much seen through different inquiries. And I think also different sizes of businesses get different quality, or sort of different levels of inquiry letters from the various tax authorities. But Ross, give us your input on that.Ross
Yeah, exactly, as you say, unfortunately, some tax authorities, are implementing these requirements at quite short notice. Certainly, if we think about some jurisdictions that have put in SAF-T (Standard Audit File for Tax), the sort of standard audit file for tax, they've made those requirements quite quickly on organizations. and it's been quite hard for us from a systems perspective to make those changes. And unfortunately these requirements that are being implemented by each country, are not harmonized. They're very much a fragmented set of requirements. So the standard audit file for tax, it's not standard in any country that we look at. And then we look at the real time reporting for VAT or sales taxes, and each country is doing that in a different way. And that makes it very hard for multinationals to be able to react. At Takeda, I always think that we're fairly lucky. We have one ERP system. I cannot imagine the challenges if we were like other organizations, which may have 5, 10 or dozens of ERP systems which require changes. But , that said, we still struggle to react to these changes at times and you need to have a great relationship with ISIT to be able to make sure that you're, able to meet the demands on you.Simon
Let's focus then on the tax managers inside corporations specifically and, ultimately, that quest to reimagine the digital tax function, as Clare puts. Ross help me understand the context here because, on EY.com, I read surveys showing that many tax professionals are already overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data – the increased computing power, the ever-growing connectivity, the widespread adoption of the cloud, which I know is important in your case, massive increases in storage capacity. Many are suggesting that they spend more time gathering and processing data than they actually do analyzing it. Would that be true from your perspective, from your vantage point?Ross
That's a really interesting insight, actually, Simon. It's probably one of the challenges that we were talking about to Clare, a couple of years ago. What we really have as our vision for tax professionals at Takeda is that they should be focused on providing tax technical insights, and really using the knowledge that they've built up from their education and their experience in the workplace, to, add value to the organization, they shouldn't be sat there dealing with processes, and trying to extract data and trying to find the information, we should have systems that are able to do that. Or if we don't have systems and if there is manual activity, then maybe we look at partnering with our global businesses, business services organization or an outsourced provider like EY, to be able to perform that work.Simon
Right. I just want to focus, though, on the stress to get things right, because presumably, that's only going to accelerate when there's virtually no time to self-audit, and correct errors in the vision that you're laying out you have tax authorities more easily able to find errors, and challenge tax positions. I mean, that's a, that's a real, that's a really new dynamic, isn't it Ross?Ross
No you're absolutely right. And it is stressful. It's changing the way that we're working. And I guess you have two options as an organization, you can be reactive, and you can have that stress, trying to respond to all of these demands, or you change the way that you're working. And we're not there yet, by any means. But we're looking to to change the way that we work, and to have technology that's able to give us the data as we require it and the processes that mean that we're interacting with the tax authorities in the way that they expect.Simon
Clare, let's just lay out this bigger vision. I mean, crucially, the call to action from you is not just to invest in the infrastructure as we discussed, but to jump the transformational bandwagon in some sense. Explain the concept to me of the connected tax professional, the development of a new professional skill set, which I think is very important to you.Clare
Yeah, it really is important. And the reason for that is because the infrastructure that's needed is really important as well, you can't calculate the relevant tax information that you need, if you don't have a good connection to the infrastructure and the technology within the organization. But you additionally need to have skilled tax team members who are willing and happy to connect with the infrastructure which is provided. And also, I think, as Ross referred to earlier, bearing in mind that they also need to connect with other stakeholders within the organization – so stakeholders outside of the tax function – it's really important that that connection is maintained and is easily used, and that it functions well. The other stakeholders of a tax function are, as we've already mentioned, the tax authorities themselves. So really, having the skill set to be able to work with the tax authorities at the right time as needed is very important. And so you're really looking at a blend of skill sets for the new tax professionals, which really looks at the tax technical skills. So having studied the technical areas of their home country or their chosen professional qualification country, but then on top of that, being really familiar with technologies and making sure that they are comfortable to use the technology skills to work through the tax items that we're looking at, to be able to then ultimately respond or file information with the tax authority in a way which makes sense and is able to be done smoothly and efficiently from their perspective. So it really is a blend. And it's one that we as a big four organization as well are challenged with making sure that the people we are recruiting have a skill set which is slightly different to one that perhaps was desirable when I was recruited 15-20 years ago, which was very much a sort of a law or finance background. And these days, we're really keen to recruit more from the STEM, science, technology, engineering and maths, backgrounds, really because those skill sets, which those sort of team members have learned by studying those, those subjects really enable them to really sort of plug into the technology needs that are required.Simon
But that must be a real issue for you. I mean if you're going to recruit beyond tax law and accounting, science, tech, engineering, and math graduates, as you mentioned there. Does the big four have sufficient pull against what we might call the big five, the tech giants or so many young people heading to start-ups? I mean, this would seem to be critical for you?Clare
Yeah, that really is one of the challenges or dilemmas which we as sort of the recruiters look at pretty much continually to be honest. So the things that we're able to attract our new joiners or our new graduates, if you like, when we're trying to compete against the big five tech giants, we have really a broad offering of services that we have within the big four. So we’re really able to give a very rich sort of career progression to our graduate joiners. We're a large organization, at EY alone, where it's sort of 300,000 people globally. So really thinking about how interesting and sort of diverse the career can be when you join a big four is really important. And once with EY it's a good experience, you're really able to work with great people, and great clients. So that's the one thing that we have, which really, I think differentiates us as a sort of a place to work is that we're working all the time with clients, such as Takeda, where you're learning something about the client's business, and then applying what you've learned internally at EY to be able to work with those clients. So it's really interesting.Simon
Clare, before we go any further, can you just explain RPA – robotic process automation – employing bots, to replace human labor? I mean, what sort of, what sort of things are these bots doing then? And what does a bot look like?Clare
That's a good question. Yeah, and this is one Simon that has over the last couple of years, we all saw the newspaper headlines where people were going to be replaced by bots. So an RPA, robotic process automation, is essentially a piece of computer software, which you write, or you use a program to write yourself, or you work with your IT team to sort of work through that to really automate so make quicker some of the otherwise manual processes which would have been done by yourself. So what you're really doing is speeding up and automating some of the, let's say, less interesting parts of your day, to enable time saving and, to be honest, to relieve some of the, let's say, boredom that might be related to some of those types of sort of mundane tasks.What do they look like? They look like a piece of computer script running across a screen. And they are pretty handy if the criteria are met to be able to put them in place, but they certainly don't replace people. And in fact, they need people around to run them and to check them when they sort of fall over and break down. So nothing to be worried about.
Simon
But just to underline that point – this is not about cutting headcount for you?Clare
Oh, gosh, no, really not. In fact, it's, I think, at the moment the other way around. So I'd say the trend in tax functions with all this additional need to meet the objectives of all the different countries as they introduced their digital tax programs looking at how the tax teams are also transforming themselves at the same time as their sort of business as usual tax work is going on, this is an increased workload. So really, cutting headcount is difficult at the moment. In fact, most teams are looking to recruit additional sort of tax technology people into their teams.Simon
Ross, do you want to pick up the conversation there and share some examples of what you've been doing at your organization? Importantly, of course, you recently announced a five-year deal with AWS, Amazon Web Services.Ross
Sure. I'll touch on RPA first, if I can, because we're really excited about what RPA can do at Takeda and it's been a real change this year from how we've worked in the past. It's also an example of what Clare was talking about, as far as developing the skills of tax professionals within the technology environment. So just in the last six months, we've got nine of our tax professionals trained up to develop RPA solutions themselves. This is not about outsourcing development work, it's the actual tax professionals writing the bots that they need to perform their roles or to automate parts of their roles. We've got another 12 people are going to be trained up in January. And we've partnered with our, with our Global Business Services function to be able to really push forwards that expansion of the use of RPA. So it's where it's important to talk to other parts of the organization and to be able to leverage what they're doing. It's not always possible as a tax function to have a business case to be able to do everything that there is in technology, and RPA is a great, great example.And then yeah, if we talk about what we're doing with AWS, you know, that is a new announcement. And if we think about bringing data into the cloud, having large data lakes that gives real value for Takeda as an organization. So if you think about the research and development part of our organization, having access to that information is critical. It enables us to be able to use technology, artificial intelligence, to bring new medicines to the market. But again, that technology is available to the organization as a whole. So we're looking at how we, as a tax function, can utilize that data, be able to interrogate it. And at some point, we will also be looking at solutions, such as artificial intelligence, being able to have all transactional data from multiple systems in one place, it's just something that's not been available for many organizations in the past. And being able to interrogate it as a tax professional on a self-service basis, is also new, being able to use tools like QlikView, or IBM Cognos or tools that tax professionals are getting more and more familiar with, and just be able to interrogate everything that's available within the organization is hugely powerful.
Simon
I do just want to drill down, though, on this point as to whether tax, Ross, needs to piggyback on a broader investment within any organization. I think what's interesting is that when your CEO announced the big AWS deal, a five-year deal, he framed this investment as bringing artificial intelligence to all employees within 10 years, but primarily cloud-based research tools to key data scientists. Are you always going to have to piggyback, in a practical sense, on investment?Ross
I think it depends on what area of tax technology we're talking about. I think a lot of the focus of the call today has been around these enterprise wide technologies. And they are the exciting ones, these are things that are new, and being able to utilize them makes a real step change. But tax is still going to need individual point solutions with respect to technology, whether that's a compliance tool for a particular country, or a research tool that we license from an external provider. So I think it's important to realize that you're still going to have to have a tax technology plan that identifies where you need to use technology, either as a point solution or whether it makes sense to partner with other parts of the organization.Simon
Clare, let's drive towards the end game here. I mean, you've been very explicit, you believe that if tax managers reimagine the tax function, it will trigger significant and permanent shifts in attitudes about how tax connects to every other part of an organization, whether that's workforce, supply chains, or trade. And then you go on to suggest that this will engender a soft power for tax managers where they can try, they could drive greater change to their organizations. I mean, ultimately, how different do these businesses look if you guys, if the tax managers, get it right?Clare
So I think that this will really enable the businesses to be better aware of the tax consequences of the business decisions that they're taking. So, for example, understanding what the tax consequence would be of maybe sourcing a particular material from one location rather than another or understanding what the implications would be of perhaps cross-border transactions or financing as they are taking those business decisions. So really sort of factoring in a tax lens as they genuinely take the business to the next level. So this means that the tax department is sort of no longer the, let's say, the policeman or the back office function, which in some organizations, it may have a reputation for being at the moment. And it really makes that sort of tax knowledge, a really integral part of the business.Simon
But Clare, how strong will the dynamic be for tax departments to outsource all of this, so almost as a way of, I guess, de-risking from a compliance standpoint. I mean, I see your organization, organizations like EY promoting their global tax platforms. How important are those, moving forward? I mean, does that become the epicenter?Clare
So it’s certainly a really great option for some organizations to really outsource the compliance work, the pieces of work, which often for global organizations are challenging to really keep on top of doing all those things in-house. If you imagine if you're operating in many, many countries across the world, to keep that work in-house is difficult and to de-risk it and to outsource all of that to a service provider is certainly one of the sort of attractive options which are out there.You mentioned the global tax platform that is EY’s future way of working with those clients, where we are providing those tax outsourced services. And this provides a technology platform on which different sort of apps can be selected in order to really enable our clients to choose which services they want to use, on the basis that it's their data. And the services we can provide are across that whole spectrum of tax. So it really sort of enables the clients to be sort of self-service in terms of what they would like to select.
Simon
Ross, you said, right at the top, that you'd made a major move on outsourcing, I think. Where do you see this evolution of insourcing versus outsourcing?Ross
Well, I think, as of now, and probably for the next few years, I think that there's a conversation that organizations have to have around whether it makes sense for them to insource, or whether they want to focus on as I said, having business partner roles or tax technology roles, or tax technical roles within their function, rather than managing processes and data. I actually think that the insource/outsource conversation may just go away after that, though. I don't think compliance is going to look like we have at the moment and that's because the tax authorities are going to be telling us how much tax we're going to pay. So you're going to have roles, either within your organization or with a partner, which is looking at data more in real time and using technology to identify where there's trends or where there's potential issues with that data that you need to correct or understand at the point of data entry.Simon
Yeah. Look, guys, we're coming to the end of our time, you both laid out a fascinating vision of the future. But clearly, there are many moving parts. And I'm not sure that we all know how we're going to get to that future. If I just said a line: five years down the line, how do you think we'll look then, Clare?Clare
Wow. Well, I think we'll definitely be probably trying to understand new technologies that we haven't even thought of yet. And how would they work from a tax and finance perspective, but I also think that everybody would have learned a lot how to be quite agile in their approach to technology and tax and finance and really have come to good skill sets around that sort of blend of events we talked about earlier, the tax technical, the technology and the sort of combining that with data you're getting from your organizations and really sort of being much more efficient, having better work-life balance, perhaps, and really sort of making the most of the technologies to help them support their sort of digital function.Simon
Ross?Ross
So I think the demands on the tax function are going to look very different. So the expectations from those stakeholders, both tax authorities and your internal stakeholders, are going to be much higher than we have today. And I think that that will be reflected in what the tax function looks like. So you're going to have people with different skills. People are going to have to learn how to utilize technology in a different way. And you're going to have roles that never existed in a tax function before. You're going to have data scientists. You're going to have people coming into the tax function, who don't have that traditional background from doing tax exams working in a big foreign environment. Perhaps having done, tax planning, they’re going to be working with systems and they're going to be STEM graduates, as Clare was referring to earlier.Simon
Ross Hay, head of global tax operations at Takeda. Clare Franklin, EY’s tax transformational leader for Europe, Middle East, India and Africa. It's been a pleasure. Thank you both for joining us. For more information, visit ey.com.A quick note from the attorneys. The views of third parties set out in this podcast are not necessarily the views of the global EY organization, nor its member firms. Moreover, they should be seen in the context of the time in which they were made.
I'm Simon Hobbs, I hope you'll join me again for the next edition of Tax and Law in Focus. Brought to you by EY. EY, building a better working world.
This is a transcript of the EY Podcast ‘Tax and Law in Focus – digital change’ which was recorded on 17 December 2020. Please note that the transcript has been edited for presentational purposes.