Chapter Six

Tax Nirvana

The Land of “Ahh…”

By reading this book and actually implementing the six steps to your tax compliance program, you are nearing what I call tax nirvana. See Exhibit 6.1.

Exhibit 6.1 Six Steps of Tax Compliance: Tax Nirvana

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The tax therapy in the six steps of this book allows you to get to the top of the pyramid's six steps, and ultimately, the top of your game. So far, you have built:

  • A foundation with awareness.
  • Added some scaffolds to help you identify tax at different levels of your university's processes and in its departments.
  • Added some windows so that you can see how to achieve compliance.
  • Included monitoring through smoke alarms (because taxes require constant attention).
  • Rounded out the structure with your reporting efforts.
  • On top of it all, you put a roof over everything you've built to give you an audit defense.

Even if you've implemented just a few of the tips and techniques presented so far in this book, you're on your way to tax nirvana. Before reading this book, your organization—whether you knew it or not—was struggling with their tax responsibilities. Tax was spread out across your campus's various departments with lots of different people—who were ill trained and ill-equipped to represent your university to any taxing authority—overseeing scattered tax issues. The complexity and decentralization of the situation presented a difficult ...

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