History

The goal of Tax 2.0 is to continue to expand an open community of tax professionals and to put industry-driven initiatives into action to support the shared strategies and vision for the future of the industry.

In October 2008, Vertex sponsored the first Tax 2.0 Executive Forum to engage, energize, and mobilize executive level industry leaders to define the current state of tax operations and collaborate on a working visual model of the future of the tax industry and to create a platform for ongoing industry dialogue and

Current State of Tax Operations	Future Vision of Tax Operations

To extend the visuals and strategies developed at the forum with the broader tax industry, the Tax 2.0 portal was launched. The site was designed to promote ongoing dialogue within the corporate tax community and aggregate industry thought leadership.

In September 2010, Tax 2.0 partnered with SchellingPoint, the leader in alignment optimization, to conduct its first broad-based research study. The initiative engaged Vice Presidents and Directors of Tax from medium- and large-sized corporations on the topic of “Optimizing Tax Department Operations,” to form the basis for developing the Tax 2.0 “Total Tax Transformation” toolset.

The first generation assessment was developed following intensive interviews with 12 senior tax executives to gain a greater understanding of the current state of tax operations, what optimizing tax operations means in practice, and the challenges they face in optimizing their tax operations.

Tax 2.0 extended an invitation to 2,200 senior tax executives to participate in the research study and 188 (9%) completed the assessment by expressing their level of agreement with the opinions. Based on their input, a preliminary “industry view” of optimization emerged.

Early in 2011, Schelling Point conducted a series of “collaborative design” teleconference sessions where they engaged 130 tax executives to gather further insights on the opinions received through the earlier stages of research. This extended perspective enabled the development of the additional Total Tax Transformation toolset components – the foundational assumptions, industry roadmap, and scorecard.