It’s now cliché to talk about what an extraordinary year 2020 was. This article presents a different perspective: front-line service professionals delivering excellence behind the scenes.
Here’s what we know about the COVID-19 global pandemic: As citizens were learning to shelter in place, businesses were figuring out how to support remote work and safety protocols for on-site work. While educators were scrambling to provide meaningful learning experiences online, governments were quickly enacting tax, legal, and regulatory (TLR) changes that could provide fast relief to people and businesses in need.
What hasn’t made the news is all the back-office work that businesses did to adopt those changes in their HR and finance systems — and how they did it in time to be compliant and serve their employees with speed, equity, and compassion. Even understanding what changes were enacted at the national, state/province, and local levels was difficult for businesses, let alone implementing those changes in their systems. It was a tall order.
Rimini Street Delivered 6,000+ Pandemic-Related Global TLR Solutions in 2020
Rimini Street clients had a powerful ally watching their backs and providing timely tax, legal, and regulatory updates — built and tested in client-provided environments — to support their applications, versions, and operational jurisdictions. By the end of 2020, Rimini Street had delivered more than 6,000 individual pandemic-related TLR solutions to clients in 42 countries, including nearly 3,500 TLR updates in 33 countries during the second quarter alone (Figure 1 shows these TLR updates by region).
Figure 1
The COVID-19-related TLR changes were not like the usual types of changes that are made year after year by government agencies. These were unexpected, urgent, and sweeping measures in dozens of countries, adding to the critical importance and complexity of the work. Examples include:
- Australia – JobKeeper wage subsidy for businesses significantly affected by COVID-19
- China – One-off Employment Subsidy to support businesses affected by COVID-19
- Indonesia – 6-month exemption from individual income taxes for manufacturing employees with an annual income up to 200 million Indonesian rupiahs
- Singapore – Job Support Scheme (JSS) COVID-19 support measure to provide wage support to employers to offset part of the wages of local employees (Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents) during the pandemic
- Taiwan – Epidemic Prevention and Care Leave for parents with children under 12 years old
- United States – Federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) to provide certain employers with tax credits to reimburse them for the cost of providing paid sick and family leave wages to their employees for leave related to COVID-19
- United States – Federal, state, and Puerto Rico changes related to Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES ACT) provisions which allow a retention credit to be taken against an employer’s Social Security tax liability
Rimini Street delivered these updates in addition to the usual run rate of changes, plus a few other unusually large 2020 changes in the United States:
- The largest set of 1099 updates in 10 years, including a new 1099 form
- The largest W4 updates in 50 years
Rimini Street securely accessed hundreds of U.S. 1099 clients’ test environments; created updates specific to each one; and then packaged, tested, and delivered those updates to them.
During this time, Rimini Street also delivered e-invoicing for clients with operations in India. Additionally, in 2020, Rimini Street began working on the latest version of Single-Touch Payroll (STP) for Australia; e-invoicing for China; and new capabilities for supporting Polish, French, and Finnish payroll.
Rimini Street Global Product Development Team Stands Alone in the Industry, Ready to Serve
All told, Rimini Street saw a 40% increase in tax, legal, and regulatory updates in 2020 compared to 2019, and each update was delivered by the Rimini Street Global Product Development team. This team is comprised of more than 200 country research specialists, product owners, business analysts, software developers, quality assurance engineers, and documentation specialists. They are responsible for the entire Rimini Street TLR updates practice, from research to delivery. And while they conduct this important work behind the scenes, they proudly serve on the front line of TLR solutions and compliance for Rimini Street clients.
To our knowledge, there isn’t another in the world that researches, analyzes, scopes, develops, tests, and delivers TLR updates to thousands of clients running Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and SAP across dozens of versions with TLR requirements for 126 countries. No matter what your ERP environment is or where you are in the world, the Rimini Street Global Product Development Team is ready to deliver, to help keep you in compliance with global TLR requirements in both good times … and not-so-good times.
Specifically, in 2020, Rimini Street:
“Closed more than 33,000 support cases and delivered nearly 89,000 tax, legal and regulatory updates for 58 countries, including more than 6,000 emergency updates related specifically to the global pandemic.”1
To learn more about Rimini Street global tax, legal, and regulatory update services — which are available to clients at no additional cost — please visit here
1 https://www.riministreet.com/press-releases/announces-fiscal-fourth-quarter-and-annual-2020-financial-results/
