Tax FAQ

• What is Longview Tax?
• What do you mean by "Don't Manage Tax. Own It! Take Control with Longview Tax"
• I currently use Microsoft Excel for free, what will Longview Tax give me that I don’t have?
• We use Microsoft Excel but need the efficiency of an enterprise Tax technology solution. Do I have to give up my Excel work papers if I implement Longview Tax?
• Does Longview Tax have a Tax Data Warehouse or a Data Management Platform?
• Does Longview Tax have Data Collection?
• Does Longview Tax work with my general ledger or Consolidation system (SAP/Oracle)?
• Does Longview Tax work with my tax compliance system? Can I integrate to any system?
• Does Longview offer a “hosted” solution?
• Does Longview Tax integrate with Microsoft SharePoint?
• Does Longview Tax have mobile capabilities?
• Does Longview Tax have Provision & Reporting?
• Is Longview Tax Out-of-the-Box? Is it configurable?
• Does Longview Tax have Planning?
• Is Longview Tax easy to Implement and Maintain?
• What are some of the benefits customers have realized from implementing Longview Tax?
• What makes Longview Tax different from other tax solutions on the market?
• Is Longview Tax Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliant?
• Can I use “what-if” scenarios and comparative analysis using Longview Tax?
• Do I have to use Longview implementation services?
• Are the Tax Service Providers Certified?
• Are all the Tax Service Providers certified?
• Why would a CFO choose Longview Tax?
• Why would a Tax Director choose Longview Tax?
• Why would a CIO choose Longview Tax?

What is Longview Tax?
Longview Tax is a suite of tax technology software products for Corporate Tax. Longview understands the types of controls and transparency today’s CFOs need, and this is only achieved through the strategic use of technology. Global corporations are challenged with trying to manage, control and make sense of the high volume of tax data spread across disparate systems. Tapping into this expertise, Longview has become the first to solve the tax data challenge. Longview Tax lets organizations take back control of tax, and is the only tax data platform that delivers the transparency and control demanded by financial stakeholders, from tax professionals to shareholders, in a way that’s cost-effective and drives value.

Longview Tax includes

• Longview Tax Data Platform
• Longview Tax Data Collection
• Longview Provision & Reporting
• Longview Tax Planning.

Please see below for a complete description of each solution.

What do you mean by “Don’t Manage Tax. Own It! Take Control with Longview Tax”
CFOs want more control over their tax data, something that historically has proven difficult to achieve. There is a lot at stake - of those tax departments facing material weaknesses, tax is the single largest area of risk. CFOs have seen the benefits of using technology in other areas of the finance department, but with no real solution for tax, tax professionals still rely on manual, time-consuming tasks, making transparency and efficiencies difficult to achieve.

Longview understands the types of controls and transparency today’s CFOs need that is only achieved through the strategic use of technology. Tapping into this expertise, Longview has become the first to solve the tax data challenge. Longview Tax lets organizations take back control of tax and own their data. Longview Tax is the only tax data platform that delivers the transparency and control demanded by financial stakeholders, from tax professionals to shareholders, in a way that’s cost-effective.

I currently use Microsoft Excel for free, what will Longview Tax give me that I don’t have?
Microsoft Excel is more and more being identified by Auditors as a control issue. Longview Tax offers a proactive and cost effective way to address this risk in a practical manner through an enterprise tax solution. Microsoft Excel has limitations as a corporate business tool - spreadsheets have a high percentage of errors, poor internal controls and it is challenging to manage a high volume of spreadsheets. Difficulty in extracting detailed information makes “Comparative analysis” or “planning/ forecasting” on the provision data extremely challenging.

The best practice to deliver reliable tax reporting under these conditions is to streamline the process and technology foundations of your tax provisioning activities. CFOs, controllers and tax executives are now shifting their focus to improve the speed, accuracy and transparency of the end-to-end global income tax process through the use of technology.

Longview Tax is an enterprise solution which increases the tax provision speed, accuracy, transparency and auditability. The Longview platform provides a centralized data storage for all the tax department data. Tax sensitized data from your ERP, G/L or any other source system can be loaded into Longview Tax and used as a source for any other tax department point systems such as provision, compliance etc.

We use Microsoft Excel but need the efficiency of an enterprise Tax technology solution. Do I have to give up my Excel work papers if I implement Longview Tax?
No. In fact, Longview Tax delivers the best of both worlds – it provides the security and efficiency of an enterprise tax technology system and the intuitiveness of Excel – all in one solution. The Longview for Excel add-in allows you to interact with your tax data via Microsoft Excel. From within your Excel work papers you can view and dynamically refresh tax data from the database. In the background, the Longview Tax database calculates and stores all the tax provision details and other tax data calculations. The Longview for Excel add-in can also be used to securely push data to the database. For example, obscure and/or complex-to-calculate tax differences can be calculated and uploaded using the Longview for Excel add-in. This feature ensures both strong internal controls and efficiency – all from the comfort of Excel.

Does Longview Tax have a Tax Data Warehouse or a Data Management Platform?
Yes. Longview Tax Data Platform is an enterprise grade software application and database that collects, stores and manages all your tax department data, while streamlining calculations. In addition, it’s powerful integration capabilities make it the single source of tax data for your department’s reporting requirements regardless of where the source data resides. By centralizing and consolidating all the data, Longview provides the tax technology foundation to seamlessly manage your global tax processes. This means
that you have a very clear audit trail from book-to-tax and legal entity-to- consolidation at all times while maintaining an appropriate level of autonomy to meet your departmental needs. Longview Tax gives you transparency, auditability, confidence and control.

The Longview Tax Data Platform solution:

• Enterprise Platform – scalable, secure and performance
• Single source of Tax Sensitized data
• Longview Integration Suite
• Web Data Collection for data and documents
• Foreign Currency translation
• Rollup and Consolidation over multiple years
• Multidimensional Database/Configurable Data Storage
• Complex Modelling/Apply Business Intelligence (BI) to Data
• Out-of-Box Reports and Ad-hoc Reports
• Configurable Dashboards with Microsoft SharePoint integration

Does Longview Tax have Data Collection?
Yes. Longview’s open technology and Longview Integration Suite allows data to be collected from / sent to any source system in any currency creating a single repository of tax reporting information. Longview Tax Data Collection provides the technology for timely and accurate financial and tax data collection from numerous source systems and any number of global legal entities.

The Longview Tax Data Collection solution:

• Load Data from Many Source Systems
• Longview Integration Suite
• Web Input Templates
• Automatic Rollup & Consolidation
• Longview Reporting & Analysis
• Longview for Excel

Does Longview Tax work with my general ledger or Consolidation system (SAP/Oracle)?
Yes. Longview Tax can import data from any system including SAP, Oracle, any general ledger system, consolidation system or tax point system such as fixed assets, data warehouse, etc. Data can be imported by the tax department. Alternatively, the Longview Integration Suite offers a suite of integration tools that allows for direct adapters to hundreds of source systems. The integration suite includes a comprehensive set of pre-built adapters for common databases, ERP and CRM applications. Please see the Longview Integration Suite brochure for more information.

Does Longview Tax work with my tax compliance system? Can I integrate to any system?
Yes. Longview Tax’s mapping tool and the Longview Integration Suite are bi-directional. Data can be easily imported or exported out of Longview Tax to any tax compliance system or any other system such as transfer pricing, general ledger, planning system, etc. Longview Tax works with all major tax compliance software around the globe.

Does Longview offer a “hosted” or cloud solution?
Yes. Longview Tax can be deployed either “on premise” or in a “hosted”/application in the cloud model (e.g. SaaS - Software as a Service). You determine the approach that best meets your needs.

Does Longview Tax integrate with Microsoft SharePoint?
Yes. Longview Tax has integration with SharePoint that can help customers leverage their existing Microsoft SharePoint infrastructure. The integration allows Longview data and documents to be leveraged in a SharePoint dashboard (eg. KPI’s, tables, graphs). The SharePoint panels can connect directly to Longview Tax reports and input templates or to documents, and supports a single sign-on.

Does Longview Tax have mobile capabilities?

Yes. Longview Tax dashboards including graphs and reporting can be used on mobile devices.  Here we show our standard Executive dashboard with an ETR graph by Region and our standard reports (Current Provision, Deferred Provision, ETR and Tax Account Rollforward) all available on your mobile device.

Longview Tax on the Go! Access your mission critical tax data and reports from anywhere

Does Longview Tax have Provision & Reporting?
Yes. Longview Tax Provision & Reporting provides the ability to report out-of-the-box in both ASC 740 (FAS 109) and IFRS/IAS 12:

• Consolidated current and deferred income tax provisions, by legal entity
• Deferred taxes by legal entity, by temporary difference
• Balance Sheet Approach or Income Statement
• Statutory and Consolidated effective tax rate reconciliation (ETR)
• Tax Account Rollforward
• Tax Basis Balance Sheet
• Notes Disclosure and Journal Entry
• Return to Provision / Prior Year Adjustment

The Longview Tax Data Provision & Reporting solution:

• Out-of-Box Standard Tax Packages and Reports
• Easy to Use IFRS
• Industry Solutions
• Interim Reporting
• Process Late Adjustments
• Integration with Compliance

Provides the full cycle solution for provision & reporting

Is Longview Tax Out-of-the-Box? Is it configurable?
Yes. Longview Tax is a best practice solution to address ASC 740 (formerly FAS 109) and IAS 12, and this functionality is out-of-the-box. The implementation of Longview’s pre-packaged solution is a rapid way of ensuring that your tax department is leveraging best practice technology and processes.

Alternatively, you may feel that your company/industry is too unique to be confined to an out-of-the-box solution. If this is the case, then you can choose to tailor the functionality to meet your company’s specific requirements. Longview’s configuration layer allows you to make company-specific changes without sacrificing the ability to make future upgrades to the software. The technology is specifically tailored to address industries such as regulated utilities (FERC), financial services, insurance (SSAP10), gas, mining and oil.

In the end you have the best of both worlds in that you rely on Longview’s market tested out of the box functionality, while not being confined by a pre-defined product roadmap.

Does Longview Tax have Planning?
Yes. Longview Tax centralizes the storage of all the tax department data providing the perfect platform to perform Tax Planning & Forecasting.

The Longview Tax Planning solution:

• Configurable Web Input Templates and reports
• Advanced Modeling
• ‘What-if’ Scenarios
• Longview Analysis & Reporting

Is Longview Tax easy to Implement and Maintain?
Yes. Longview knows that the tax department and IT resources have limited time to implement and maintain software, that’s why we’ve created simple easy-to-use administration interfaces and initial system load files to implement and go-live in a matter of weeks.

Administration Interface to add new Legal Entities quickly

What are some of the benefits customers have realized from implementing Longview Tax?
The primary benefits organizations realize through the use of Longview Tax are as follows:

• Efficiency – As compared to Excel-based provisioning, many hours of non-value-added activities can be reclaimed by allowing the technology to address all of the repeatable functions such as tax consolidation, foreign currency translation and dynamic validation of data. Of particular note is the ability to quickly and accurately process late adjustments.
• Improved Internal Controls – The Longview Tax web dashboard and workflow engine ensures that you know the status of your provision at all times. The system ensures that everyone is working from the same set of data and tracks all changes to the data by individual, date and time.
• Reduced Risk – The enterprise-scale tax engine and the improved internal controls inherent in the system combine to significantly lower tax risk over traditional spreadsheet processes. The adoption of tax technology can go a long way to address growing concerns over lack of transparency as it relates to corporate tax governance.
• Tax Analysis – The reporting tools in Longview Tax are unparalleled. They allow your tax department to better understand your current data, as well as to better forecast your future tax results.
• Ease of Maintenance – Longview Tax provides an easy-to-use application for all basic maintenance functions, such as adding legal entities, setting up new permanent and temporary differences and adding users.

What makes Longview Tax different from other tax solutions on the market?
Technology – Longview Tax is an enterprise tax technology solution that provides a robust platform that can be expanded as your tax technology needs increase. The Longview Tax database is expandable to include all the tax sensitized data required by the tax department. All the Longview Tax products, Longview Tax Data Collection, Longview Tax Provision & Reporting, Longview Tax Planning as well as Longview Consolidation, Longview Planning etc use the same technology platform and can be used separately or together.

• Transparency – The robust reporting capabilities of Longview Tax ensure that you have complete transparency to your tax numbers. All too often technology adoption can result in a “black box” – where a number goes in and a number comes out, but you cannot immediately discern how you have arrived at that result. Longview Tax reports always clearly show the audit trail from book to tax and summary to detail.
• User Friendliness – The “drillable” interface allows users to easily navigate their tax provision numbers. Whether you are a controller in a foreign jurisdiction submitting your tax package or you are a power user at Corporate reviewing the consolidated footnote, you are never more than a few mouse-clicks away from the answers you need.
• Flexibility – Longview Tax empowers your organization to address unique scenarios that may not
  fit into a standard out-of-the-box solution. The easy to configure interface allows you to address company-specific situations that may not have been easily foreseen. This results in less work-arounds and, therefore, greater efficiency and accuracy.

Is Longview Tax Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliant?
Yes. It also enables compliance with Canadian Multilateral Instrument 52-109 and meets requirements within Europe for internal controls and management of tax accounting risks.

Can I use “what-if” scenarios and comparative analysis using Longview Tax?
Yes. Longview Tax has unparalleled analysis capabilities. Our customers greatly appreciate the increased visibility that the tool provides their tax departments. Many tax departments are using Longview Tax to develop a budgeted effective tax rate (ETR), track developments by legal entity and then compare the results to the actual ETR. The ability to quickly analyze data, support complex drill through, and run “what- if” scenarios may offer the single largest ROI for tax technology adoption.

Do I have to use Longview implementation services?
No. Although Longview has an experienced team of tax and technology professionals, you are not obliged to use Longview’s professional services organization. Numerous tax service providers, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and Accenture have been trained on Longview’s Tax technology and related processes. These firms are skilled at delivering the entire range of services surrounding Longview Tax.

Are the Tax Service Providers Certified?
Yes. Longview has a rigorous certification program for Tax Service Providers and Consultants. The program has been designed to offer reliable training and validation of experience in the following areas:

• Review of tax data collection, provision and accounting processes
• Best practice process redesign, improvement and automation
• Implementation support
• Accounting services
• Advice on internal controls, including Sarbanes-Oxley
• Advice on IFRS, IAS 12, FAS 109

Are all the Tax Service Providers certified?
Yes. An annual audit of both Individual and Firm level certifications will be conducted to ensure that individuals are up-to-date with the latest industry knowledge and best practices. 

Why would a CFO choose Longview Tax?
The Longview Tax Data Platform gives CFOs the transparency and control they need to feel confident. Tapping into the power of the Longview Tax Data Platform - which provides visibility to all tax department data - CFOs can help make unwanted surprises a thing of the past and better protect their reputations and that of their employers, by:

• Delivering integrated and reconciled data faster and more efficiently
• Driving more accurate results across more data
• Helping to manage risk across the organization, and reduce risk to corporate and personal reputations

Why would a Tax Director choose Longview Tax?
Technology change is coming to the tax department. Other areas of finance have seen first-hand the positive impact of technology, and the old ways of doing tax reporting will soon disappear. The Longview Tax Data Platform gives tax professionals a way to manage that change, control their destiny, and provides the best opportunity to take control of their process.

• Rework becomes easier to handle as a result, reducing the extra hours required
• Having changed from data collection to data analysis, Longview Tax will help tax professionals continue to evolve their role

Why would a CIO choose Longview Tax?
Built for seamless data integration, Longview Tax provides a proven tax technology foundation for integration of tax data with other enterprise-wise reporting data. Longview delivers a flexible and powerful solution that will grow along with the organization in a way that’s cost effective. Scalable performance - Longview’s enterprise grade database can aggregate and analyze billions of rows of data across thousands of users. Longview offers a hosting solution as well, to offer the option eliminate the burden of added systems to the IT department.