Fortune 50 beverage company implements International Tax Certification portal for target company shareholders and their brokers

A ‘Fortune 50’ beverage company acquired a US listed, Israeli domiciled company. The State of Israel requires that all shareholders, registered and beneficial, complete a Tax Declaration Form to certify withholding status before payment is made.

For years, target shareholders and their brokers have complained that the paper process for completing and processing the Tax Declaration Form is slow, expensive, and unworkable, with no way to track the status of submitted forms.

Solution

Computershare designed and developed an International Tax Certification portal. This fully digital solution allows shareholders to complete the tax certification form online through a secure platform.

It also allows brokers to invite their clients to complete the online tax certification form. Brokers then review and approve their clients’ submissions in a central, secure workspace.

Brokers, Computershare and the Israeli Tax Agent have access to the portal for submission, review, and approval. All parties have full visibility into the application and approval process.

Computershare has taken a cumbersome and time-consuming manual process and transformed it with easy-to-use functionality in a transparent, self-contained system all parties can access.

The portal eliminates the need for shareholders to complete forms by hand and mail them for processing. With the online portal, all mandatory form fields must be completed, ensuring users cannot bypass certain sections, which vastly decreases the number of rejections for both incomplete and illegible forms.

When the solution launched, 120 of the largest brokers in the US invited their clients to use the International Tax Certification portal.

Brokers find the online portal simple to use, easing their workload. Some reported that the online forms saved about two hours of research and processing per holder, resulting in approximately ten times fewer rejections compared to the manual system. By replacing complex paper forms with Computershare’s intelligent online solution, brokers and shareholders experienced significantly reduced costs, faster processing times, and expedited payments. A win-win for everyone.

The portal is also fully transparent, allowing companies, brokers, shareholders and the tax agent to see the live status of each item as they await approvals, resulting in fewer follow-up calls and inquiries.

As a breakthrough solution, the International Tax Certification portal demonstrates Computershare’s commitment to technology innovation and to continuously improving the client experience.