THOROUGH REVIEW AND ANALYSIS RESULTS IN RECOVERY OF OVER $1 MILLION IN OVERPAID TAX
CLIENT
Our Fortune 500 client, an insurance company based in the eastern United States, offers life insurance, disability income insurance, and retirement programs throughout the country. This company has a physical presence in several states, including California.
CHALLENGE
Our client was investigating tax savings opportunities; having headquarters in the eastern US, its accounts payable and tax departments were unaware of the nuances of California’s sales and use tax laws and the possibility of overpaid taxes in the state.
SOLUTION
DMA – DuCharme, McMillen & Associates, Inc., brought in its sales/use tax team with specific expertise on California tax law. The team thoroughly reviewed and analyzed the client’s books and records, and determined that the company had significantly overpaid vendor-collected use tax for multiple years.
RESULT
DMA assisted the company with its overpayment recovery process, which ultimately resulted in generated tax savings of approximately $350,000 per year—over $1 million in total. DMA’s tax experts worked with the client to educate its staff on the California tax code in question, and assisted its tax team in creating best practices to ensure overpayments would not occur in the future. DMA’s tax team also worked with the client’s vendors to educate them on the exemption to prevent future tax being charged in error.
“This was simply not an issue that our accounts payable department nor our tax staff was aware of. Had we not taken advantage of DMA’s offer to review our sales and use tax payment history, we may never have recovered over one million dollars in overpaid taxes – and we would still be paying those erroneous taxes each year.”
WHY DMA?
DMA performs US sales/use tax and Canada sales tax overpayment reviews on behalf of our clients to recover overpaid tax dollars that can be reinvested in their company, and identifies tax errors that indicate improvement opportunities within the people, processes, and systems associated with sales and use tax administration. Our approach is customized to each client’s specific business operations, as no two companies are the same.
DMA is a leader in developing new tax strategies and identifying specific tax issues, and our sales/use and commodity tax professionals have generated billions of dollars in tax savings for our clients. DMA’s proven processes, along with the expertise of jurisdiction-specific tax professionals, ensures that our clients realize the maximum benefit available.