Most Irish businesses don’t have the resources to evaluate and respond to new tax legislation and to digital taxes, and an overwhelming majority of 93% expect that complying with transparency initiatives will add to their workload.

That’s according to an EY Ireland survey entitled ‘Reimagining the Tax and Finance Function’, which found that 69% of respondents believed they lacked adequate resources to handle forthcoming changes in the tax regime affecting business.

The study was conducted among 167 senior business leaders in 14 industry sectors.

Tax partner Aidan Meagher (pictured) said: “While tax specialists are generally accustomed to traditional approaches to business, there is no doubt that the change needed is being acknowledged, and that technology and transformation are firmly on the C-suite agenda. 

“The pace of change in technology is understandably daunting for the profession, and overhauling traditional processes isn’t something that will happen overnight. When computers were introduced, they revolutionised the world of work, and now it’s hard to imagine working without a computer. 

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“Similarly, the way we now look at tax requires a different philosophy, and technology will again revolutionise how we work, in a very positive way. It’s a journey that will involve incremental change, and learning new processes and disciplines.”

The study also found that 84% of organisations agree that the mix of skills required of the tax function will change in the next three years, with technology and process skills becoming more important, and 96% saw this as a moderate or significant challenge.

However, only 16% of those surveyed are confident they currently have the right operating model in place — although than 80% are taking action to address deficiencies in their current operating model.

Less than half, at 45%, expect investments in technologies, including robotic process automation, to reduce the labour hours in their functions.

EY’s head of tax technology John Farrelly added: “Future-proofing tax functions involves understanding that technology is part of the solution and not the solution in itself. Tax functions are re-assessing their operating models by analysing activities and categorising them by value, allowing people to focus on the delivery of high-value, decision-oriented tasks that require human judgment.  

“We’ve developed a new offering called Connected Tax, which is our long-term investment in tax technology. It provides a framework designed to help tax functions drive value and use resources in a more efficient way.”

The company says that this platform uses technology to unlock the data from enterprise systems so as to enable value-adding analytics and intelligent automation to support tax professionals. It claims that it can use data and technology “to drive value, manage costs and mitigate risk”.