Success Story - Reynolds Consumer Products

Challenge

After spinning off from their parent company’s tax department, the Reynolds Consumer Products tax team wanted to reassess and modernize processes wherever possible. Challenges included intricate and fragile legacy provision and return workpapers with numerous interdependencies, tabs requiring external and manual calculations, and the need to update data in a certain order.

Solution

The team decided to move away from Excel and leverage CSC Corptax^® Provision, Compliance, and Office POV with the goal of transforming their tax continuum to the fullest extent.

Result

After implementing Corptax Provision, Reynolds fine-tuned the process and now automates more than 90% of calculations in Corptax.

They automate trial balance import, adding any new accounts monthly to eliminate extra tasks during busy quarterly and year-end closes. Once they import the TB, most adjustments are computed automatically. State provision is automatically calculated as federal taxable income flows directly, and apportionment percentages flow from prior-year, as-filed tax returns.

Next, they enter state modifications with a single click using Corptax Office and update the Corptax NOL and credit schedules for current year utilization. Once complete, this data automatically flows back to federal provision as the state deduction. Finally, the team reviews tax contingencies and valuation allowances tracked by Corptax, updating as necessary.

Using the state deferred scheduler, Reynolds’ deferred inventory by state automatically reflects current rates as well as enacted rates for future years.

Corptax computes and tracks all this data. Relevant interim and YTD provisional reports—ETR, Deferred Summary, etc.—are complete and in a reader-friendly, consistent format for the team, management, and auditors.

The best part: they do the vast majority of work before the books close, giving them time for detailed, unhurried review—resulting in complete, accurate, and auditor-passed provisions.

Reynolds copies the finished provision to their compliance case, saving time re-importing trial balances, posting auto adjustments, and validating work. Because state returns automatically reflect changes to federal taxable income, they just populate state mods and review for checkboxes and payments before filing. User-friendly Corptax e-filing resulted in zero e-filing rejections their first year filing extensions and returns.

With a single system, all data flows from year-end provision and tax compliance cases, automatically producing return-to-provision. Prior-year tax due automatically flows to state RTP—and both federal and state current and deferred RTPs naturally flow to the correct parts of the provision. Historically a large project, RTP now takes a matter of hours as the reviewed source data is centralized.

Corptax Provision calculates each state’s estimated annual tax; Reynolds uses this data to easily compute quarterly estimated tax payments. After pulling this data into Excel via Corptax Office POV, the team simply layers on adjustments.

With Corptax, Reynolds transformed outdated workpapers and processes into repeatable and consistent methods. Work and reviews are finished before books close. They say, “we don’t experience surprises because we know what to expect.” Plus, the team achieves work-life balance, and audit-approved results garner compliments from management for their consistency and clarity.

• Automates 90% of provision calculations
• Takes 2 people 2 hours to finalize journal entry once TB received
• Working ahead allows 3-week close with deep review vs. 4-day time crunch with minimal review
• Achieves 40-hour weeks vs. late nights and weekends
• Running scenarios takes no extra time with all data stored in Corptax
• RTP takes just hours as reviewed source data is centralized