Sales & use taxes touch nearly every aspect of a company’s operations from vendor payments to customer billings. Many companies are unable to track how much they’re paying in sales tax on their purchases and the companies that do, separately track the sales tax charges are not confident it is being tracked consistently across all data entry points. With 45 states plus the District of Columbia imposing a sales & use tax, along with many local jurisdictions, the combination of different sales tax jurisdictions is quickly approaching 10,000. Sales tax laws vary greatly by state and jurisdiction, which makes it cumbersome for companies to accurately manage their sales & use tax obligations.
Sales and use tax rates range from 4.4% to just over 10%. When these rates are applied to annual spending budgets, it’s easy to see how a small error made by a vendor or group of vendors could add up to significant overpayments. Additionally, if a company is accruing and self-remitting use tax on certain purchases that aren’t subject to sales tax, the population of overpayments expands greatly.
Most states offer various entity specific or use-based exemptions, but the application of these exemptions vary greatly by state. Many companies realize these exemptions exists but aren’t taking full advantage of them, thereby overpaying the state for these taxes. Companies can request refunds of these overpaid sales & use taxes, but many do not have the resources or specialized expertise to do so.
Clearview Group’s dedicated sales & use tax experts can identify and secure refunds on your behalf on a contingent fee basis - if we don't identify and recover any financial results, there is no cost to you. This process is minimally invasive, requires very little resources from our clients and majority of our work can be done remotely. Our State & Local Tax team uses data analytics tools and valid statistical sampling techniques to determine if refunds exist with pinpoint accuracy.
As part of our analysis, we will also determine if any underpayments exist, thereby eliminating the risk of filing a refund claim that triggers an audit with unknown consequences. We will file refund claims with the appropriate jurisdictions and work with these jurisdictions to review our claims and secure the refunds on behalf of our clients. Some jurisdictions require us to work directly with vendors to secure refunds/credits, which we do while being very mindful of the relationship between our clients and their vendors.
Aside from securing refunds, another priority of our State & Local Tax team is placed on transferring our knowledge to our clients. At the conclusion of the project, or sooner if desired, we will provide process improvement recommendations and work with internal process owners to transfer our knowledge so the risk of future overpayments is eliminated.
Clearview Group’s State & Local Tax Team recently secured in excess of $5M in sales & use tax refunds for two clients. The refunds related to purchases made in connection with our client’s manufacturing, research & development and general & administrative operations.
For more information on potential sales and use tax refund opportunities, contact Clearview Group.
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