Tax Agency Implements Common Identifier to Improve Collections

State Tax Administration Implements Common Identifier and Consolidates Databases to Improve Collections

This large state revenue department enforces regional tax and revenue laws while overseeing citizen compliance. Their goals are to secure revenue for their jurisdiction by efficiently managing the collections, abatement, and property ownership programs. To ensure optimal performance, this agency needs to accurately forecast revenue receipts, identify and model uncollected revenues, as well as report revenue collections to legislature

The Challenge:

Incomplete data inhibits taxpayer identification & verification

The management of a successful tax collection program requires access to detailed and accurate information about local businesses and individuals. Yet this tax and revenue agency operated without a single source of truth about its taxpayer base.

Data was housed in several disparate and fragmented systems, which provided patchy and often inaccurate information. Basic facts such as company name, address, and phone number were regularly incorrect or missing altogether.

Compounding this issue, the agency was often unable to contact delinquent taxpayers or even identify whether businesses were actually active. The inefficiencies in collections and outreach programs severely hindered operational effectiveness.

The Solution:

Taxpayer database consolidation, enrichment and cleansing

The central objective was to improve the quality of the agency’s taxpayer data by cleansing, enriching, and consolidating legacy databases. The Dun & Bradstreet D-U-N-S® Number was mapped to each entity record to define a unique identifier – allowing the append of insightful information such as industry sector and delinquency risk to each record; and, most importantly, enabling the correction and identification of company contact information.

With a single source of truth in place, regular batch file cleanses are conducted by Dun & Bradstreet to ensure reliable, high quality data.

Leveraging proprietary data and analytics, Dun & Bradstreet continues to support the agency with specialized projects such as detailed skip tracing assignments and lien holder analyses.

The Results and ROI:

Improved collections, risk assessment and reporting capabilities

This tax administration’s newly enriched and consolidated taxpayer database provides the accurate and timely business intelligence required to achieve operational excellence. Enriched and verified entity records allow the agency to maximize onsite and call campaign collection efforts while providing the ability to proactively assess aggregate risk.

Through these technological, data, and process upgrades – the agency accelerated and raised much needed revenue that contributed positively to the jurisdiction’s financial performance, mitigating a budget deficit. The modernization also resulted in an expanded capability to deliver robust legislative reporting – increasing oversight and transparency.

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