Thomson Reuters — OneSource Sales & Use Tax

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From the August 2009 Review of Sales & Use Tax Programs

Thomson Reuters recently combined many of its corporate tax products under the OneSource brand, including the former InSource Sales & Use Tax and Tax Partners. The resulting OneSource product line will provide OneSource Sales & Use Tax users with a new portal-based application that gives them faster and more direct control over workflows and data management.

The self-managed, server-based OneSource Sales & Use Tax software system will generally retain the same feature set, providing a comprehensive in-house solution for mid-sized and larger enterprises with multi-jurisdictional sales and use tax compliance needs across multiple geographic locations, divisions and subsidiaries. OneSource Sales & Use Tax software provides rates, compliance and special taxing rules for all U.S. and Canadian taxing authorities.

With direct integration with a company’s ERP or other financial management applications, it provides real-time rate lookup for transactions and estimates, and utilizes comprehensive back-end databases and taxability matrices that ensure appropriate taxation. As with most high-end sales and use tax systems, pricing for OneSource Sales & Use Tax is dependent on transaction volume and jurisdictional needs, and starts around $10,000 for an all-jurisdiction-inclusive taxation and compliance package. Thomson Reuters also offers companies a completely web-based sales and use tax option, as well as a monthly rates-only subscription service that enables import of tables into financial applications.

NAVIGATION & DATA ENTRY:
As an integrated sales and use tax system, the main navigation elements for OneSource Sales & Use Tax software are centered on system management, compliance review and reporting elements, with authorized users having the ability to perform account reconciliation functions, make overrides as necessary, and drilldown from reports and on-screen jurisdictional returns to transaction and line-item level details.

During transaction and estimate entry, One-Source Sales & Use Tax performs geographical verification of tax rates and special taxability rules and then inputs appropriate rate data into the business’ sales management system. Upon completion of a transaction, data is posted to necessary GL accounts and is also transferred to the system’s compliance component, where returns are automatically populated and prepared. Reports offer period and jurisdictional analyses.

OneSource Sales & Use Tax software offers the ability to print signature-ready returns or use e-filing and electronic payment of liabilities to those jurisdictions that support electronic filing. The system also provides comprehensive management functions for exemption certificates, as well as a full-time audit trail. The software can be integrated with virtually any enterprise-level accounting/ERP system, and can import and export data into spreadsheet and ASCII formats. Returns can be saved as PDFs.