Only One in Six Enterprises Treats Indirect Tax as a Standing Board Item
Key Highlights
- ➤Only 16% of enterprises discuss indirect tax at board or executive-committee level
- ➤43% address indirect tax only when a problem arises, if ever
- ➤Board-level tax discussions correlate with autonomous or routine AI use at 54% versus 21%
- ➤Most capable AI tier comprises 13% of enterprises and 85% call tax a funded technology priority
- ➤73% of enterprises with indirect tax reserves tie at least one-quarter to unsubstantiateable treatments
Expert Statements
Allison Cerra, Chief Marketing Officer at Vertex
“Indirect tax is one of the few functions where determinations are made continuously, exposure is lasting, but conversations about risk are episodic and after the fact”
Allison Cerra, Chief Marketing Officer at Vertex
“The enterprises running indirect tax best govern it like any other strategic function, as a recurring part of how the business is run, not only when issues surface. The gap between those two postures is not a matter of scale. It is a matter of attention.”
Kevin Permenter, Research Director, Enterprise Applications at IDC
“The findings suggest that operational maturity in indirect tax is less about organization size and more about governance.”
Kevin Permenter, Research Director, Enterprise Applications at IDC
“With compliance requirements becoming increasingly continuous, organizations that integrate tax into broader business and technology decisions appear far better positioned to adapt to change, manage risk proactively, and maintain visibility across the compliance lifecycle.”
KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa., Nov. 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vertex, Inc. (NASDAQ:VERX) (“Vertex” or the “Company”), the Decision-to-Defense™ global indirect tax and compliance company, today released the 2026 Vertex CompOps™ Index, a global study of how enterprises govern indirect tax and compliance, and how closely tax, IT, and finance work together to run it.
At most enterprises, indirect tax has no standing place in the room where strategy is set. Only one in six (16%) reports it as a standing item at board or executive-committee level, and at 43%, it surfaces only when a problem arises, if ever. Those that discuss it there at least periodically look markedly different. They are one-quarter as likely to say their errors are usually identified by external parties (4% vs. 16%), nearly twice as likely to answer a tax-authority notice within five business days (48% vs. 26%), and half as likely to make and verify taxability changes entirely by hand (13% vs. 26%).
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