Success Story - Smithfield Food Inc.

Challenge

Five members of Smithfield Food’s international tax team, including expensive loan staff, had to work nights and weekends for three weeks straight to organize and upload data from 100 tax packages from various sources and legacy general ledger systems. With packages arriving at all hours from all over the world—including packages from joint ventures—they wanted a better way to tackle data collection and to structure multiple purchase accounting adjustments during compliance season crunch-time.

Solution

Using CSC Corptax^® Office functionality to control the process, Smithfield now spends less than five minutes per tax package. Automating the process allows the team to:

• Update permanent and temporary adjustments and manage changes quickly and easily
• Keep recurring adjustments consistent across periods
• Accelerate compliance work and improve GILTI by imputing E&P adjustments during provision season
• Expedite the tested income and loss calculation for GILTI inclusion

Results

Streamlining a formerly cumbersome process:

• Frees up 500 hours for other essential work
• Eliminates virtually all transcription errors for peace of mind
• Allows Smithfield to maintain tighter SOX controls, further reducing risk

Plus, the ability to use provision data for the compliance lifecycle without rekeying eliminates even more time and risk—and automating steps provides more flexibility to integrate tax reform into the process going forward.