Posted by on March, 9 2020 8:29 pm
April fifteenth is just around the corner. Is your contact center ready?
This is the question on many minds of call center managers as they work toward readying their staff and their center for the often-dreaded tax deadline. This year, though, that deadline doesn’t have to spell doom - or even stress - for your center. Prepare your call center for tax time with these tips and be ready when Uncle Sam asks for their cut.
What you do to prepare your call center for tax time will depend largely on who your target demographic is and who works for you. Are your employees all likely to be filing? Probably. Do you work for a company whose consumers are looking for help filing as well? Perhaps. Are you considering the details of filing as a business owner for a smaller operation? Maybe. All of these are things to take into consideration when preparing your call center for tax time so you can ensure that the right information is available.
Preparing your call center for tax time is not unlike preparing any other business. There are some simple steps that nearly every company should follow to make tax preparation simpler and more straightforward - and to ensure that there are fewer possibilities of an audit due to mistakes.
If you own or operate a contact center, there are several levels of financial preparedness you will need to check off your list for tax time. First, ensure that your business’s finances are in order. If you have the right technology, this should be a simple inquiry, as all of your company’s financial information should be easily available to you. If not, this might be a great time to consider an upgrade!
Second, get your own financial information in order. For those who own or are the primary proprietor of their contact center business, this means that preparing your business and personal taxes may overlap. Just be sure to be exhaustive in collecting your information so that your filing can be as accurate as possible in both regards!
When you’re filing corporate taxes, choosing the right form can be tricky. Some businesses can be considered attachments to a person’s own personal taxes if they own and operate it on their own. Others - those employing other people and with multiple business owners or proprietors - require an 1120 form. Still others - those that fall into a very specific category - require a hybrid form known as an 1120s form.
If all of this is confusing, you’re not alone. Luckily, your local tax professional can guide you through the process.
While everyone knows the deadline of April 15th as tax day in the United States, filers actually have until a few days afterward, if that day falls on a weekend. Likewise, there are a few other date variations to know about.
Understanding your actual deadlines will ensure that you don’t make mistakes that could drastically impact your filing success.
Once you know your deadline, it’s time to get your documentation submitted. This is where some people - and businesses - have problems. If you think you’re going to run into complications with the filing process, be sure to seek help early. You don’t want to wait until the last minute for tax filing assistance and be stuck filing late because no one was available with the right skill set to help you with corporate taxes!
Just as it’s important to ensure that your center prepares its taxes appropriately, so too should your management staff do their best to help your employees and consumers successfully survive the tax deadline.
Tax season is stressful for everyone. If you run a center that will handle tax-related questions and concerns, this is certainly true for your staff. Equip them to handle consumer queries with the right training - and be sure that you staff your center appropriately during the weeks leading up to the tax deadline. Remember, this constitutes a scaling up in terms of staff, so be sure you have the right tools to do so, whether that means bringing more remote agents online or simply scheduling more agents to be on-site during prime business hours.
If you aren’t fielding tax-related questions in your center, you’ll still have a checklist for tax season involving your employees. To ensure that your staff handles their own tax responsibilities correctly, consider briefing your team as a whole with a tax-related training and holding smaller group conferences to address specific concerns. This way. You can ensure your company adheres to tax law from top to bottom - and no one has to dread the deadline!
Having the right technology in place in your center to document consumer data and company financial information in real time will make the process of preparing for your taxes much simpler. If you don’t already have that in your center, the weeks leading up to the tax deadline are a great reminder to do so.
Ready to prepare your call center for tax time? Whether that means helping consumers, agents, or yourself as a business owner, get a head start with the industry experts at ChaseData. We have the software solutions your team should be using to track every detail, so nothing goes overlooked when preparing to file. Want more information? Give us a call today!