Consulting
Ryan has been a trusted partner that has delivered substantial value and tax savings for many years.
The greatest long-term value we provide is the transfer of our knowledge. We believe that the more we educate our clients, the stronger our relationships with them become.
Ryan’s strategic tax advisory services improve overall tax performance—providing innovative solutions to address the issues and errors that we identify—and creating greater opportunities for clients to improve efficiency, become more strategic in their approach to tax, and deliver outstanding value to their shareholders.
Audit Representation
Exposure Identification Reviews
Ryan eReview®
Strategic Tax Planning
Voluntary Disclosure and Registration
Ryan manages the audit process from beginning to end, ensuring that we minimize our client’s burden to the fullest extent possible. Our tax professionals handle the arduous process of producing records for the state and securing files required to build the case, determining which issues merit an appeal and the likelihood of success for each. We manage the day-to-day information flow between our client and the taxing authority to ensure timely, complete, and accurate responses and assist with accelerated dispute resolution processes to reduce the costs and other burdens associated with audit defence activities. As needed, we meet with auditors, dispute resolution officers, administrative hearings attorneys, and other agents to clearly identify all positions that impact our client’s ability to achieve a favourable outcome.
Services Provided
We understand the importance of constructive relationships with taxing authorities. We also understand that respect is earned. From informal conferences to administrative level appeals, our goal is to resolve tax controversies quickly and professionally. And when disputes can’t be resolved through simple negotiation, we’re prepared to fight for our clients’ interests for as long as it takes. Our Audit Representation provides a comprehensive range of services, including:
- Audit coordination
- Audit review and opportunity assessment
- Audit sampling analysis and evaluation
- Controversies and appeals
- Responses for information and document requests
- Risk assessments
- Tax audit representation
- Tax compliance and reporting evaluation
- Taxability determinations
- Voluntary disclosure and registration
Ryan understands that a critical element of tax administration is risk mitigation. Accordingly, Ryan’s Complete Sales Tax Solution™ includes an exposure review that identifies errors and areas of non-compliance, so clients can correct them before potentially incurring costly penalties in the future. Ryan’s reviews may cover all transactions, or simply a specific area of concern.
Our consultants leverage the most advanced proprietary tax review software in the industry to conduct the deepest, broadest, and most accurate sales tax reviews. Utilizing this program, we can examine more than one million transactions at a time, identifying any critical issues, exposures, and potential areas of concern.
Services Provided
Ryan’s seasoned professionals employ a comprehensive approach to exposure identification reviews, which includes:
- Generating and evaluating random invoice samples
- Reviewing sales tax billing, collection, and remittance procedures
- Evaluating the effectiveness of any internal controls and compliance processes
- Delivering a comprehensive report summarizing our findings
- Quantifying the sales tax liability in each jurisdiction
- Recommending ways to address any sales tax issues and improve compliance
During a sales tax review, Ryan consultants utilize Ryan eReview® as a tool in their identification and analysis of potential federal and provincial sales tax savings opportunities. Refined over the past decade, Ryan eReview® is the industry standard in the Canadian sales tax consulting industry. It is used exclusively for the benefit of Ryan clients. Only Ryan eReview® is based on 30-plus years of knowledge and best practices in Canadian sales taxes and developed specifically for our proprietary review process.
As powerful as Ryan eReview® is, it’s remarkably non-intrusive, and the software is always used in conjunction with the expert analysis of highly qualified Ryan sales tax experts. All that is needed is access to the appropriate electronic data, arranged in advance by our certified data and systems specialist. To protect your confidential records, we employ rigorous security safeguards. These include the latest security technology on all computer desktops and laptops. This is in addition to strict security guidelines, restricted file access, client agreements, and personal employment contracts.
Pioneering and powerful by any standard, Ryan eReview® helps provide clients with the deepest, most accurate analysis of Canadian sales tax payments.
- Customized for each engagement based on the client’s system, G/L accounts, and jurisdictions in which it’s registered
- Pre-defined data analysis tools and queries make identifying potential savings and exposures fast and accurate
- Powerful drill-down features provide the ability to analyze transactions in aggregate as well as to drill down to the individual posting details
- Transactions are targeted with comments identifying opportunities for follow-up to the source documents
Strategic Tax Planning Services
Ryan’s Strategic Tax Planning services focus on our client’s overall tax performance, creating greater opportunities to measure and improve efficiency, develop a more strategic approach to tax, and deliver outstanding shareholder value. Through benchmarking current performance, identifying best practices in relation to peer and historical performance, and measuring the delta between reality and the potential of our client’s tax department, Ryan provides a clear strategic plan for transforming the tax function into a Tax Competency Centre.
Ryan professionals help our clients plan and implement processes and technologies that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their tax operations. We assess tax positions and develop strategic plans that include transaction structuring, business reorganization, and alternative filing positions. And we ensure that the efforts of our clients' tax departments are positively impacting the overall strategic objectives of their organizations.
Services Provided
Ryan leverages years of experience and best practices to help our clients design and implement proven planning strategies for mitigating risk, minimizing tax liabilities, and improving efficiency and effectiveness through a suite of services, including:
- Alternative filing positions
- Business reorganization
- Risk mitigation planning
- Strategic business planning
- Tax automation
- Total performance assessments
- Transaction structuring
- Workflow assessments and solutions
Ryan’s Voluntary Disclosure and Registration services assist corporations in negotiating voluntary disclosure agreements (VDAs) with the most favourable results possible. We have experts in each tax specialty who have assisted clients with VDAs in many jurisdictions. We assist clients with single or multiple negotiation requirements, involving one or multiple tax issues. Ryan professionals have years of experience and maintain constant contact with the tax jurisdictions to ensure the most up-to-date VDA information is readily available to our clients.
As part of any engagement with a client, we first analyze all of the facts attributed to the business and activities taking place in a respective jurisdiction. We then work with our client to determine potential exposure and possible methods to minimize that exposure. This process might entail determining whether a client’s customers have accrued and remitted tax, the customers’ current audit status, and possible back billing of taxes. We customize each project to maximize client value and simultaneously interact with multiple jurisdictions, so we can efficiently complete the engagement. In all instances, our clients receive a closing agreement or a signed agreement with each tax jurisdiction to clearly define their exposure.
Services Provided
Ryan assists clients in registering and settling past taxes, if applicable, and paying the correct amount required under each jurisdiction’s VDA program. We are often able to negotiate prospective agreements when our client’s fact pattern presents the opportunity. Our Voluntary Disclosure and Registration services include:
- Customer examinations for tax accrued, remitted, and audit status
- Exposure identification and calculation
- Payment remittance
- Prospective agreement negotiation
- Registration and past tax settlement
- Tax minimization strategies
Ryan Expertise
Ryan has been a valued partner of H&M Canada during our growth from one store in 2004 to nearly seventy stores and growing, helping us navigate the complex sales tax landscape and minimize our tax liabilities.
Why Ryan
While our clients recognize that our expertise in tax recovery is world class, they are increasingly focused on prospective tax improvement as the regulatory climate and market dynamics change. We have responded by leveraging tax recovery as a “means to an end,” creating opportunities for our clients to achieve greater performance across their total tax function with a suite of value-added consulting and advisory services. We work through their particular tax issues, we share what we know, and we pass on our extensive knowledge.
Unmatched Results
News & Insights
News & Insights
Integrated End-to-End Tax Services
Ryan is focused on your overall tax performance, providing innovative solutions to the underlying causes of the errors we identify and creating greater opportunities to measure and improve your efficiency, develop a more strategic approach to tax, and deliver outstanding value to your shareholders.