While the convenience of my bank’s automatic bill-pay service is great, it’s easy to lose track of how much some of those bills have been costing.
Such was the case when I looked at how much my satellite TV bill cost last month. I was overwhelmed!
Considering that my family doesn’t watch much television outside of the basic channels, I decided to take a peek at my account.
Sure enough, I was getting charged for all premium movie channels, most of the sports packages, and a few other random packages. No wonder my bill was so high!
After determining the channels we watch on a regular basis, we trimmed down the packages and cut our monthly bill in half.
Connecting the Dots
I’ve had clients that were overwhelmed by the number of sales tax returns that they filed each month. While some of those cases were due to limited resources, others were because they were unnecessarily filing certain sales tax returns.
If you’re filing sales tax returns in jurisdictions that routinely result in a zero liability, you should ask yourself the following questions:
- What type of sales does my company make in that jurisdiction?
- What type of presence does my company have in that jurisdiction?
- What type of controls does my company have to ensure all transactions relating to that jurisdiction are being properly recorded?
If you determine that you’re filing certain sales tax returns unneccesarily, it’s easy to either withdraw or suspend your account in that jurisdiction. You can always reopen it at a later time if you need to.
Your job is hard enough, so invest a few minutes to determine whether you’re doing more work than you need to each month!
