How We Made Tax Accuracy More Than a Pipe Dream by CypherTax CEO Scott Taitleman

What if I told you even top accounting teams know their best efforts at corporate tax and audit preparation are just educated guesses? Complex, nuanced regulations make it difficult—nearly impossible, in fact—to achieve true tax accuracy, especially when it comes to sales and use tax.

What’s more, the data that’s input into the tax process is often siloed across numerous systems, making it difficult to access and correct. Often, mistakes are realized far from the time they happened, meaning they’re practically baked into the project.

For years, public accounting has talked about fixing this problem, without producing any real solution. The industry has accepted the status quo as inevitable. But, the truth is, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Enter CypherTax, a flexible technology that’s nimble and simple enough to bring tax precision within reach. I’m excited to announce that our revolutionary software is now available to the general public.

My team has been operating this system internally for nearly six years, perfecting the program and creating a compass that guides businesses big and small toward tax accuracy. With our agile software, you can navigate issues like audit defense, accruals, analysis, and more—saving your company millions of dollars in the process.

But before I get into the specifics, let’s take a step back. Where did the CypherTax story begin?

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Living the Tax Accuracy Problem

To understand the CypherTax story, you first have to understand my story. I was an untraditional student, taking a few gap years between high school and college to gain some real-world experience. When I finally went to school, I enrolled in Drexel University. At the end of my first year, I was offered the opportunity to work at Ernst & Young in their compliance group as part of a Drexel co-op.

The work was supposed to last half the year, but I ended up staying for 15 months thanks to leadership’s interest in my growth. In addition to the compliance group, senior members of the firm also allowed me to immerse myself in state and local tax practice, ultimately introducing me to the work I would end up doing for the next 20 years.

After finishing my degree credits, I took a full-time offer at EY. Years went by, and I continued scaling tax technology projects at another “Big 4” firm. Eventually, I landed at Deloitte.

I rose through the ranks at Deloitte rapidly, earning director status in just a few years. As our projects grew significantly in scope, I shifted my focus from delivery to oversight. My team was talented and successful, but over the years, we ran into the same issue over and over again: No matter how well the project was done, there was always a component we couldn’t pin down due to outside circumstances.

Whether we were brought into a project at a later stage, or we were stuck with master data and other immutable processes, we’d run into errors that would prevent us from reaching our ideal finish line. Even if we were involved in a project from the beginning, we didn’t always get the tax content we needed, leaving potential gaps at the end of the project larger than they should be

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A Vision for the Future

I soon realized there are too many constraints in public accounting for a solution to come to fruition from within the firm. To advance your capability, you have to make investments. Big firms, however, are set up to minimize risk and prioritize the short term—not an ideal combination for innovation.

Still, I had a vision for technology that could advance our processes. I decided that if I was going to do this, it would have to be on my own. So, I gave my notice, and I founded CypherTax.

I began by partnering with a professional investor who believed in the CypherTax mission. He introduced his own colleagues into the mix, some of whom are involved in quantum technology at Microsoft, and we put together a team to build the software.

However, great technology can take years to develop. While it was challenging, it was the most fun I had working in years. I wanted to do this right. Ensuring our first clients had positive experiences was more important to me than revenue. Now, we’ve proven the concept. And companies are saving millions of dollars with CypherTax.

How We Help

It’s about time we make our software available to everyone. Here’s how we help.

CypherTax technology can change processes for businesses everywhere. Standardized reports rarely encapsulate the entire picture. With CypherTax, you no longer have to work within a rigid system. Now, our clients have improved optics for a far more accurate tax result.

We process data differently, allowing you more flexibility with how you characterize that data. Users can easily update their information during period closing in minutes, not days, simplifying corrective action before filing returns. We give you more evidence in defending your audit and act as an alternative for businesses that can’t afford a million-dollar tax implementation integration.

Hitting the reset button on public accounting, CypherTax technology can benefit your organization even if you don’t have big consulting dollars. Our 360-degree view captures information more accurately from wherever it exists in the business to give you real visibility in your data, so you can make better decisions about your business.

By leaning on software experts to drive development with input from subject matter experts like myself, it turns out, we built something far more flexible and useful than we ever could have imagined. We’ve created the ability to bring tax accuracy to everybody at a cost-effective, appropriate price.

Creating a product that truly helps everyone who uses it feels good; it’s a rare, but true, win-win situation. Tax accuracy is better for accounting firms because they can complete projects faster and take on more clients. It’s also better for the client because they can anticipate the results of an audit with greater confidence and spend fewer dollars on consulting help.

CypherTax even benefits state and local tax regulators—something we never anticipated—because companies who use our product can produce accurate and comprehensive data to support audit requests quickly and easily. It’s gratifying work, and my team and I truly love what we do.

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Get In Touch

If you’re ready to feel confident about your tax position and recover wasted dollars, CypherTax could be a fit for your company. Please reach out to start a conversation.

I’d love to tell you more about our technology and what makes us different even if all you have time for is a no-pressure, 10 or 15-minute call.

For the right people and firms, CypherTax can make a world of difference. So let’s talk! I can’t wait to show you what we do.

Ready to learn more? Get in touch with CypherTax to hear how our technology can help you.