How corporate tax teams reclaim thousands of hours

Your highly skilled, corporate tax professionals spend a disproportionate amount of time on manual, repetitive work. Reconciling data across systems, fixing spreadsheet errors, and recreating documentation during close and audit cycles has become standard practice. This creates more than inefficiency. It creates a chronic capacity constraint that limits your team’s strategic impact. 

The real challenge is not your team’s dedication. You already know they work hard. The challenge is ensuring your tax professionals have the capacity and confidence to support business needs at the speed your growth demands. 

Independent research conducted with Forrester shows that when organizations address the structural causes of manual work, tax departments can unlock thousands of hours annually while improving scalability, risk posture, and strategic impact. 

Jump to ↓

The issue is not just inefficiency. It’s what inefficiency prevents your team from accomplishing

What changes when you solve the structural problem

Why manual work persists despite experience and effort

How tax teams create capacity at scale

Standardized, integrated data flows

Consistent calculations and embedded controls

Workflow visibility and lifecycle alignment

Independent evidence: What Forrester found

From time savings to strategic advantage

The issue is not just inefficiency. It’s what inefficiency prevents your team from accomplishing

Manual processes take more than time from your team. They create a cycle of rework, delay, and risk that compounds across the entire tax lifecycle. 

Where tax teams lose time

Data handling challenges 

• Manually pulling and reformatting data from multiple ERP systems 
• Managing spreadsheet based calculations that are vulnerable to version control issues 

Rework and error correction 

• Rechecking numbers as source data changes during close 
• Recreating documentation for audits and internal reviews 

Process coordination 

• Tracking deadlines, approvals, and handoffs across emails and shared files 

When reactive compliance work absorbs most of your team’s capacity, sustaining strategic contribution becomes nearly impossible.

What changes when you solve the structural problem

Recovering thousands of hours is not about pushing your team to work faster. It is about changing how tax work gets done. 

When manual work dominates the tax lifecycle, the cost isn’t only measured in hours lost. It shows up in missed opportunities like delayed insights for leadership, reduced participation in forward looking initiatives, and limited ability for tax to act as a strategic advisor to the business. 

Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study found organizations using standardized, integrated tax workflows reduced tax preparation time by 50%. For a composite organization, completing 500 tax returns annually, this equated to more than 10,000 hours of capacity created each year. 

How tax teams used time from recovered capacity

• Supporting forecasting and effective tax rate analysis in real time 
• Engaging earlier in M&A, restructuring, and market expansion 
• Responding to executive questions in hours rather than days 
• Improving audit readiness without lastminute scrambles 

The value extends beyond time saved. It reflects what organizations can now strategically accomplish with additional capacity. 

Why manual work persists despite experience and effort

You have likely recognized these challenges and attempted incremental solutions. Manual work persists because its root causes run deeper than process tweaks can address, and many tax teams are trying to drive change while operating with real resource constraints. 

We’ve found this tension is reflected in broader industry trends. According to the 2025 State of the Corporate Tax Department report, these pressures are widespread. 58% of tax departments report being under-resourced, limiting their ability to step back from day-to-day demands and redesign how work gets done. At the same time, 59% of tax departments report a lack of confidence in their ability to sufficiently upgrade tax technology and automation over the next two years, making transformation feel risky or out of reach. 

These pressures show up in common, persistent obstacles: 

• Fragmented data sources require repeated extraction and reconciliation 
• Spreadsheet dependency increases error risk and forces rework 
• Disconnected provision and compliance processes create return-to-provision issues 
• Limited workflow visibility makes issues harder to identify early 

As long as these conditions remain, efficiency gains stay temporary. As scale increases, the burden on tax teams only grows, reinforcing the cycle of manual work and limiting the function’s strategic impact. 

How tax teams create capacity at scale

Organizations that successfully free up time do not rely on individual productivity gains. They redesign how tax operates across the full lifecycle, addressing structural inefficiencies rather than layering incremental fixes on top of existing processes. 

This shift is increasingly intentional. According to the 2025 State of the Corporate Tax Department report, 51% of tax departments plan to introduce new technology or automation as their primary resourcing strategy. With limited ability to add headcount, many teams recognize scalable capacity must come from how work is designed and supported. 

These capabilities do not emerge from point solutions or short-term workarounds. They require purpose built, integrated platforms designed specifically for the tax lifecycle, from data ingestion through provision, income tax compliance, and reporting. 

Leading tax teams focus on foundational capabilities, supported by ONESOURCE Direct Tax solutions. 

Standardized, integrated data flows

For many tax teams, data arrives from multiple ERP systems with different formats, timing, and structures. This often means significant effort spent extracting, reformatting, and reconciling information before tax work can begin. 

With ONESOURCE DataFlow, financial data flows directly from source systems into tax workflows, replacing manual handoffs with automation and consistency. 

This shift gives tax teams: 

• A single, trusted dataset for provision and compliance 
• Fewer reconciliation tasks and manual data adjustments 
• Reduced version control issues during close 

Instead of spending the early days of close gathering and validating data, teams can focus immediately on analysis and planning.

Consistent calculations and embedded controls

Across entities and jurisdictions, tax calculations often develop independently over time. This creates variation in how similar calculations are performed, increasing rework, audit risk, and pressure during close. 

Using ONESOURCE Income Tax and ONESOURCE Tax Provision, calculation logic is applied consistently across the organization, with validation built directly into the process. 

As a result, tax teams benefit from: 

• Earlier visibility into potential issues 
• Fewer downstream corrections and amendments 
• Stronger alignment between provision estimates and final return calculations 

Confidence in the numbers comes earlier, reducing rework and uncertainty throughout the close cycle. 

Workflow visibility and lifecycle alignment

Tax compliance work spans multiple contributors, deadlines, and review cycles. Without shared visibility, coordination often relies on emails and spreadsheets, making it difficult to anticipate bottlenecks or manage handoffs across regions. 

ONESOURCE Workflow brings structure and transparency to the entire tax lifecycle by making ownership, timelines, and progress visible in one place. 

This level of visibility supports: 

• Better coordination across global tax teams 
• Stronger documentation and audit readiness 
• Faster, more accurate updates to forecasts and effective tax rates 

Tax functions operate as coordinated teams rather than isolated contributors, improving efficiency and stakeholder confidence. 

Together, these capabilities help tax teams scale operations and support growth without adding proportional headcount. More importantly, they create the conditions to move beyond reactive tax compliance and operate as a strategic partner to the business. 

Independent evidence: What Forrester found

To validate the business impact of this approach, Thomson Reuters commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct an independent Total Economic Impact™ study of ONESOURCE Direct Tax solutions. 

Based on interviews with four organizations, Forrester developed a composite organization to model the financial impact. The study identified the following three-year, risk-adjusted results: 

• 50% reduction in tax preparation time, recovering more than 10,000 hours annually 
• $667K in avoided compliance and remediation costs, including penalties and rework 
• $915K in avoided hiring costs, supporting growth without expanding headcount 
• 148% return on investment, with a $1.7M net present value 

Beyond quantified savings, organizations reported faster close cycles, stronger audit readiness, improved collaboration across finance and tax, and greater confidence when supporting strategic initiatives. 

From time savings to strategic advantage

The real constraint on most tax teams is not expertise. It is capacity. 

Manual, fragmented processes absorb time, increase risk, and keep tax in a reactive role. When organizations standardize and integrate core tax workflows using ONESOURCE Income Tax, Tax Provision, Workflow, and DataFlow, they do more than recover hours. They create the foundation to operate with greater confidence, speed, and strategic relevance. 

When tax teams stop racing the clock, they gain the credibility to lead and operate strategically, rather than simply respond. 

Unlocking thousands of hours is the outcome.
Building a scalable, resilient tax operating model is the advantage. 

Download the Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study of ONESOURCE Direct Tax solutions 

Explore the full methodology, assumptions, and financial analysis behind these findings.