Effectively in Control:
The Answer for Reduced Completeness and Accuracy Checks During Tax Audits Warren Buffett once said that risk comes from not knowing what you are doing. We believe that this quote can also be applied to the current business environment, wherein Tax Assurance is the method by which a company can assess its tax risks, manage them, as well as mitigate these risks to an acceptable level (Tax Risk Management). Furthermore, the presence, monitoring and testing of the tax internal control framework, including the accounting organization and the measures of internal control (hereinafter: AO/IC) are globally being presumed as an indispensable part of the tax risk assessment performed by the tax auditor. AUTHORS JEANISE JOB, MEIJBURG & CO. CARIBBEAN AND JEANNITZA FELIX, MEIJBURG & CO. CARIBBEAN
Tax Assurance is not only assurance on the tax position in the financial statements, but concerns everything related to the process of tax aspects in a company, such as Tax Risk Management, AO/IC, management control, corporate governance, tax policy, relationship with the tax authorities, etc.. In this article we will elaborate on how Tax Assurance, specifically
20
CURAÇAO BUSINESS
Tax Risk Management and an effectively working AO/IC, including internal monitoring activities can lead to a reduction of the completeness, respectively the accuracy checks during a tax audit. If the aforementioned is present and is working effectively, the tax auditor may take the work performed by the external auditor into consideration, and solely review and discuss
| NUMBER 1 | 2017
their dossiers, since both the external auditor and the tax auditor rely on the same information related to the company’s AO/IC.
Tax audit The tax audit is the process in which the tax auditor checks and accesses the audit object on a basis of criteria, and forms an opinion that
