Reuters, KPMG Team For Aussie Business Taxes

Business information firm Thomson Reuters is teaming up with global tax company KPMG to offer Australia businesses a solution to deal with fringe benefits taxes (FBT), Thomson Reuters announced Thursday (Feb. 6).

The Thomson Reuters software ONESOURCE Fringe Benefits Tax — widely used by Australia businesses — will now be supported by KPMG’s Employment Tax Advisory group. The partnership will give both companies the opportunity to collaborate on ways to improve the product and help organizations more easily comply with Australia’s administrative-heavy FBT.

Hayley Lock, KPMG partner, said the Thomson Reuters software “is synonymous with strong governance for FBT” and is well-known “within the Australian tax market.”

She added KPMG is looking forward to using “our hard-earned know-how from the preparation of large-scale FBT returns” and tax technical chops “to catapult ONESOURCE … into a future driven by data, analytics and automation.”

The ONESOURCE FBT software automates the tax calculations necessary to file an FBT return.

“As the market-leading FBT solution, Thomson Reuters continues to invest deeply to solve customers’ complex FBT challenges,” said Nicholas Wong, head of proposition (APJ, emerging markets) for Thomson Reuters. “Our mission is to continually develop technology our users love, while also re-imagining tax and finance compliance.”

He added that its alignment with KPMG “allows Thomson Reuters to match its market-leading software with the market leader providing FBT consulting services.”

KPMG’s Employment Tax Advisory group offers employment tax services to help clients manage compliance risks and reduce costs.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) said in August that there is an $11.1 billion small business “tax gap” — the difference between income tax collected and what small businesses actually owed. About two-thirds of that gap is attributed to cash-in-hand payments and “black economy” activities. The Australian government is preparing a strategy to combat tax dodging among small businesses.