What is Longview Tax?
Longview Tax streamlines and automates tax data collection, tax provisioning (FAS 109, IAS 12, and CICA 3465) and tax planning for today's global organizations, employing best-of-breed data management and global collaboration capabilities. Using Longview's open technology, information is automatically collected from any source system, in any currency creating a single repository of tax information.

Do I need to purchase the entire Longview Performance Management Platform to license Longview Tax?
No, Longview Tax can be licensed separately and deployed either on premise or in a ‘hosted’ model (e.g. SaaS-based). Longview Tax is general ledger agnostic and can integrate seamlessly with any consolidation system (such as Hyperion HFM).

Is Longview Tax prepackaged or does it need to be configured?
Longview Tax has “pre-packaged” processes to address FAS 109, IAS 12 and CICA 3465. You may use this functionality “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 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.

Can Longview Tax import data from compliance software to support the True Up?
Yes, Longview Tax data can be exported out of the system and mapped directly to a tax compliance system – such as CorpTax, Insource, Vertex, Abacus (UK), Alpha Tax (UK), and TaxPrep (Canada).

Does Longview Tax work with my general ledger – such as SAP or Oracle?
Yes. Longview Tax can import data from SAP, Oracle, and any other general ledger system. This data can be imported by the tax department via ASCII/CSV files. Alternatively, Longview Tax offers a suite of integration services that allows direct adapters to hundreds of source systems.

Can I import data from other systems?
Longview can interface directly with countless systems (such as fixed asset systems, data warehouses, sub-ledgers, etc) to help automate the income tax reporting process.

Can Longview Tax be directly integrated with any consolidation system?
Yes, Longview Tax is agnostic to the underlying source systems and is best-of-breed at importing data from ERP's such as Oracle, SAP, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, etc.

Does Longview Tax handle global provisioning and tax planning for all countries?
a. Yes, Longview Tax automates the calculation of a company's global income tax provision including all countries, states, provinces, and local municipalities. The solution can calculate a provision for every tax return a company files around the globe, by legal entity and jurisdiction.

b. The same rules used to calculate the above provisions can be used for tax planning. For example, users can simply shift income to different legal entities to see what the impact is on the consolidated effective tax rate.

What makes Longview Tax different from other tax solutions on the market?

1. Transparency – The robust reporting capabilities of Longview Tax ensures 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 can not immediately discern how you have arrived at that result. The Longview Tax reports always clearly show the audit trail from book to tax and summary to detail.
2. 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 a power user at corporate reviewing the consolidated footnote, you are never more than a few mouse-clicks away from the answers you need.
3. 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 interfaces 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.

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:

1. Efficiency – As compared to Excel-based provisioning, many hours of non-value-added activities can be reclaimed by allowing the technology to address all 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.
2. 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, time, and date
3. Reduced Risk – The enterprise-worthy 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.
4. Tax Analysis – The reporting tools in Longview Tax are unparalleled. They allow your tax department to better understand your current data, as well as better forecast your future tax results.

I have specific industry requirements – can Longview Tax address my specific needs?
Longview Tax is a perfect solution for complex industry and statutory requirements. Due to the unique configuration layer of Longview Tax the solution can address even the most complex processes. The technology is specifically tailored to address industries such as regulated utilities (FERC), financial services, Insurance (SSAP 10), Mining, and Oil & Gas.

Can Longview Tax automate a company's income tax footnote?
Absolutely, in fact, as soon as corporate accounting closes the books on a pretax basis, Longview Tax calculates all required provisions and deferred taxes, effective tax rate reconciliation and a draft income tax footnote within minutes. Tax executives can now analyze instead of reconciling the numbers.

Is Longview Tax SOX compliant?
Yes, the solution also enables compliance with Canadian Multilateral Instrument 52-109 and European Directive 8, the SOX equivalents for those countries.

Can Longview Tax calculate a state income tax provision by legal entity, by state?
Yes, Longview Tax calculates a state income tax provision for every state and city return a company files.

Can I use what-if scenarios and comparative analysis using Longview Tax?
Yes. Longview Tax has unparalleled analysis capabilities. Our customers love the increased visibility that the tool provides their tax departments. Many tax departments are using Longview Tax to develop a budgeted ETR, then using the robust reporting features to track developments by legal entity, compared to 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.

Can Longview Tax handle specific sub-consolidations, say, for UK Group Relief or a Dutch Fiscal Unity or a state unitary return, etc.
Yes, Longview Tax can be set up to calculate tax provisions that mirror the entities included in a tax return for every tax return around the world. And to be very clear, this is not just a “group” of entities, it is a true complex sub-consolidation that reflects the true tax consolidation.

What options are available to me in terms of software deployment (SaaS, On premise, etc.)?
Longview offers two options for software deployment. The first option is a “hosted” (aka ‘SaaS’) solution which will allow you to access Longview Tax via Citrix access. Alternatively, Longview Tax can be hosted on your internal servers. Longview has 15+ years of experience deploying enterprise-level technology in the most rigorous IT environments.

Do I have to use Longview implementation services?