In an environment where e-commerce has radically transformed the retail landscape, tax management faces new challenges and opportunities for business competitiveness.
In the webinar Ways to automate tax management in an omnichannel retail landscape , Pablo Gopp, foreign trade solutions expert at Thomson Reuters , explained that retail has become a market highly sensitive to price and customer experience .
This is especially relevant in e-commerce, whose global growth has been steady. In 2023, Mexico positioned itself as the country with the highest growth in online sales within the sector, standing out as one of the most dynamic markets worldwide.
In this context, Enrico Palacios, tax solutions specialist at Thomson Reuters, emphasized that companies face a complex tax burden that includes taxes such as income tax, VAT, and special tax on personal income, as well as state and municipal taxes.
One of the biggest challenges, he said, is the high volume of transactions and CFDIs, which complicates accounting and tax reconciliation, especially in processes such as VAT refunds.
“Manually reconciling what the authorities have with what the company has is unsustainable,” he warned.
In this sense, automation and technological innovation allow us not only to comply with obligations, but also to ensure traceability, efficiency and error reduction .
Gopp explained that digital solutions allow you to work directly with data from its original source , repair it when necessary, and generate deliverables and reports required by authorities.
“We are managing to resolve the complexity of the case through technological innovation, automating these processes and making them more secure,” he noted.
Regarding foreign trade, specialists highlighted that oversight has also been tightened, driven by an authority with increasing visibility over operations.
“The authorities already know where we’re going wrong and often allow us to correct them before initiating a more in-depth audit,” he said.
Among the main risks detected are customs valuation, temporary operations, incorrect declarations and inadequate tariff classification , which can be interpreted as an attempt at evasion rather than simple human error.
The omnichannel environment also requires ensuring compliance on multiple fronts: working with the right partners, ensuring merchandise availability in stores and digital platforms, accurately projecting landing costs (the final cost of products), and meeting estimated delivery times.
“The dynamism of international trade imposes challenges ranging from market diversification to detailed cost and logistics time control,” Gopp noted.
To address these challenges, Thomson Reuters has developed a modular suite of technology solutions, known as Global Trade , specifically designed to automate key processes in foreign trade.
These tools, hosted in the cloud and certified under standards such as ISO 27001, allow you to consolidate and audit estimated versus actual expenses by transaction, reuse data throughout the tax and accounting cycle, and connect with third-party systems such as customs brokers, forwarders , and shippers, among others.
A key feature is the prediction and control of logistics costs. Contractual terms with suppliers, such as customs broker fees, can be pre-loaded into the system.
With all this, automation not only reduces operational burdens, but also strengthens compliance, increases competitiveness, and enables more agile response to an increasingly complex tax and commercial environment.
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