Intaxication: The Red Moon Solutions Tax Blog

Home Posts by klear

What Does Your CFO Care About and Why Should you Care?

Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 22, 2012 in Finance, Leadership, Tax, Tax Planning | 0 comments

Every year, I take an in-depth look at what the CFO’s are saying and predicting for the coming year. Last year I shared my findings with you. I thought I would do that again, as this is a pretty important thing to understand. But, why should you care? Well, in most cases the tax department must rely on approval from the CFO for tax department budgets, operational decisions, and other strategic initiatives. Therefore, I believe it is critical to better understand what they are hoping for, struggling with and trying to overcome each year. It can only help you when putting together a business case or trying to prioritize tax department projects, as you may be able to better align with overall CFO and other corporate initiatives. Big fan of doing your homework!

Hot Tips to Negotiation for Tax Pros!

Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 16, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Leadership, Tax | 0 comments

A standard definition of Negotiation is “a conversation or dialogue between two or more people, attempting to reach an understanding or gain advantage of some sort, to resolve a point or competing perspectives, to produce an agreement upon courses of action, or to bargain for an individual or for your team. Negotiation is a process where each party involved in negotiating tries to gain an advantage by the end of the process”. Do any of these descriptions fit your day to day activities? Or more fittingly perhaps, do you realize that on a regular basis it is tough to get what you want? Whether it be more money for the tax department to automate or add staff, to negotiate a tax position, or to argue for greater pay, bonus or benefits? Perhaps to negotiate different tactics to reduce ETR, increase tax savings or free up cash flow?

Is FATCA Keeping You Up at Night?

Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 14, 2012 in Compliance, Finance, Tax | 0 comments

Throughout the conferences I attended last year, I heard a lot of presentations and discussions tailored towards tax department challenges, financial reporting, tax reporting and compliance concerns. Most talks were titled “Emerging Trends” in a particular area, or “Income Tax Challenges”, “Tax Accounting Concerns” and other such nomenclature. There were also lots of questions to conference participants trying to illicit what folks’ biggest concerns were for 2011 and 2012. As you can imagine, I definitely heard a lot of heated discussion. Interestingly enough, quite a few folks were even savvy enough to answer the question with FATCA. In fact, I heard several tax pros say that they have had plenty of time to plan for and implement changes to mitigate risks on the new Uncertain Tax Positions (UTP) compliance this past year, as well as on their other tax accounting challenges (good for them!).

Which Dog are You?

Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 9, 2012 in Humor, Tax | 0 comments

OK, I just completed some research on the latest tax related material weaknesses and am getting ready to write up some best practices on remediation…and have been writing some pretty “heady” blog posts lately (at least in my mind). So, I thought I would take a quick break and share something funny for a change. I honestly don’t know what made me think of this theme other than the fact that sometimes my dog seemingly takes on the funniest “human characteristics”, and it got me thinking about certain folks in the business world and what I think they would look like if they were actually characterized by a dog. OK, so maybe I have been working too hard lately and need a break.

Your Survey Says “WHAT?!”

Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 7, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Innovation, Process Improvement, Tax | 6 comments

I just recently shared a post called “Going Undercover – Do you Really Need To?”. The gist of the article touched on the fact that you shouldn’t need to ‘go undercover” like the CEO’s in “Undercover Boss” on CBS’s popular television show. You should be able to employ some simple techniques and tools to be able to keep your pulse on what is going on your team, in your department or within your organization. If you are a tax professional within an organization, it is easy to get caught up in the daily grind of tax compliance cycles, tax and regulatory updates, and audits. Often times, we know that we should be able to make marked improvements in our processes, however we rarely have the time to dedicate to this effort. Further, we may not know what key areas we should focus on, and are not exactly sure where and how to get started.

« Older Entries

Blog Authors

Jim Shedivy

Jim focuses on the long term strategy and the alliance opportunities for Red Moon Solutions, a privately held family business. He has over twenty years of experience in managing tax technology projects and businesses.

Kelley Lear

Kelley is a member of the executive leadership team and leads our sales and marketing efforts at Red Moon Solutions. Kelley’s extensive experience in project management, product management, and consulting with Fortune 500 and Global 1000 clients is extremely important in this role.

Susan Sabatini

Susan Sabatini is the Client Services Manager at Red Moon Solutions. She uses her project management experience and a client focus to ensure Red Moon Solutions’ clients have successful implementations. Susan also leads our client support team.

Traci Wheeler

Traci is a member of the executive leadership team and leads our sales and marketing efforts at Red Moon Solutions. She has over ten years of software business experience serving small and large clients in a variety of industries.