Case Studies

When one of the firm’s emerging technology clients was making plans to sell their business, Trevor and his team noticed that they were unaware of sales tax filing requirements. Knowing from experience how complex such requirements can be for emerging technology companies who sell products across multiple taxing jurisdictions, Trevor and his team understood that this missing piece would pose issues during due diligence and could negatively impact the client’s sale.  

To help ensure that the sale went smoothly, Trevor and his team suggested that the Schneider Downs state and local tax group perform a sales tax nexus study on the company. The group performed an analysis on both the client’s material revenue streams and the sales tax reporting requirements in the jurisdictions where they had customers. Then, Trevor and his team used that information to estimate the client’s total tax exposure, pinpoint the jurisdictions with significant exposure and help draft Voluntary Disclosure Agreements in those the jurisdictions.

“We know that these requirements can be hard on early-stage companies when they have limited staff and revenue generation is a primary focus,” said Trevor. “By doing this analysis and going through the voluntary disclosure agreement process, we were able to get the company compliant with their sales tax filing requirements at a significantly reduced cost.” In addition, this process eliminated tax issues and exposure for the company upon exit.

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

As leader of the Automotive Services Group, Steve learned from most, if not all clients that they were struggling with COVID-19’s impact on their ability to maintain an inventory of new vehicles. For dealers using the last-in, first-out (LIFO) method of inventory accounting, when inventories dip, normally the LIFO reserve is recaptured, and more federal income taxes are due. Therefore, because of the pandemic-fueled shortage, many of Steve’s clients were faced with potential significant tax liabilities. 

Steve and his team took a two-pronged approach to helping their clients avoid the LIFO reserve recapture. “We suggested a different accounting method to calculate LIFO reserve to avoid the recognition of income prematurely,” he said. In addition, the group devised a way to bolster their clients’ inventory calculations. “We combine the dealer’s used vehicles and parts with their new vehicles to create a larger pool of inventory and to capitalize on the very large used vehicle inflation,” said Steve. This made the LIFO reserve recapture not as drastic and, in some cases, increased the reserve.

Working with Steve, one client experienced a 25% increase to their LIFO reserve, rather than what would have been a 60% drop caused by the pandemic. Implementing Steve’s team’s suggestions, the dealer changed their income by approximately $2 million and achieved over $600,000 in deferred tax savings.  

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

During frequent communication throughout the pandemic, Matthew realized one of his clients was struggling with a significant drop in gross receipts. Matthew and his team continually monitor legislative tax changes and noticed previously excluded organizations that received PPP loans and were now also eligible for employee retention credits.

“Once we noticed an area of opportunity related to the Employee Retention Credit, we were able to calculate the credit available while navigating PPP forgiveness to ensure maximizing both programs,” said Matthew. “In the end, we identified and claimed over $1 million in refundable credits and the clients were thrilled.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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One of Kim’s clients operates multiple community-living homes and was struggling to determine if employees were using their company credit cards appropriately. Through audit procedures, they were able to uncover questionable transitions and change the credit card usage policies.

“We were able to identify a new purchasing card provider for our client and assess the data that they could utilize under this new system,” said Kim. “That way, they can more effectively monitor the transactions through automated reporting which safeguards the client’s funds.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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One of Doug’s clients, a professional services company, was looking to transition their Research and Development (R&D) study to Schneider Downs to save money and maximize the R&D tax credit. Doug’s team was able to use their expertise to expand the sample of projects reviewed in 2019 and increase the net R&D credit.

“This expansion helped identify an R&D tax credit of almost $900,000—almost double what have been identified in previous years,” said Doug. “We were able to help our client save significant money and maximize their R&D tax credit.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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One of Greg’s clients was a father wanting to retire and give his son 100% ownership of their company. Giving his 80% share in the company would result in a $1.5 million tax due on redemption. Greg’s team was able to avoid the $1.5 million tax and introduce asset protection by having the father creator a grantor trust instead.

“By creating a grantor trust, the father was able to sell his shares under the same terms as redemption but save money since no gain is recognized on the sale,” said Greg. “We were also able to integrate asset protection into the structure and procure the recurring tax and attest services.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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During a routine review of one of our client's operations, Gennaro's team identified something that wasn't very routine at all. They discovered that the client was using multiple incorrect methods and calculations for computing tax depreciation for their fixed assets. Gennaro met the client to discuss the issue, presented a solution to correct the problem, quantified the results, and implemented the changes resulting in a favorable adjustment of nearly $4.5 million. Gennaro's expertise and eye for detail was critical in helping this client fix a problem they didn't even realize that they had.

"We're good at identifying opportunities or exposures that aren't on our clients' radars," Gennaro said. "It's not necessarily what we were originally retained to do, but while we're executing our engagements, we're always looking for new ways to help our clients and minimize their tax burden."

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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One of Staci’s clients was struggling with cash flow issues and wasn’t sure how to better manage their liquidity. But Staci’s team had an in-depth knowledge of the company and a clear understanding of their operations. Through detailed benchmarking of the company’s financial results as compared to their peers, a template was created to better project cash flows and positively impact key ratios.

“In addition to benchmarking performance, we were able to provide the client with an analysis to evaluate a key contract,” Brogan said. “This allowed them to negotiate better terms for the organization which also helped with their liquidity.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service. 

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One of Mary’s clients was reorganizing their overseas operating structure and wanted to move certain assets to different jurisdictions. The client had been purchased by a Private Equity group and called us about updating a valuation we had previously done for the business. In addition to working through the valuation questions, we were able to identify an opportunity to revise their restructuring plan to avoid taxation of a significant portion of the transactions.

“By asking questions, having a strong understanding of their needs, and collaborating with the client, we were able to save them roughly $1 million in taxes,” Mary said. “Plus, our plan enabled them to generate future tax deductions overseas to offset the current cost of restructuring. We also saved them substantially on fees.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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Don’s team had an ongoing audit engagement with a large manufacturing company that ran two subsidiaries as if they were separate companies. This resulted in disparate accounting, human resources and IT functions. In addition to providing traditional audit and tax services, Don tapped the expertise of Schneider Downs’ Technology Services, Risk Advisory Services, and Human Resource experts to present a comprehensive back office consolidation plan.

“We conducted a comprehensive back office assessment of technology, processes, and a skills assessment of existing client personnel,” Applegarth said. “Leveraging strong relationships with the owner and key decision makers, the client trusted our multi-disciplinary team to come up with an effective back office implementation that ended up saving the company more than $600,000 annually. The client knew there would be savings, but they were extremely pleased with the amount of savings, new synergies, and tangible benefits to the Company’s operations going forward.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service. 

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While speaking with a client, the conversation turned to tax reporting for retainages held under contract. Jay suggested the client have a follow up meeting with the tax team to look into this issue in more detail and review the overall method of reporting that was being used for income tax reporting purposes. After changing their accounting methods, we filed amended returns for open tax years and were able to get the client a significant refund on prior year’s returns. Plus, this new favorable reporting method was implemented going forward.

“It’s always satisfying to help clients find new and unexpected savings,” Meglich said. “This client was then able to leverage the cash flow into financing that assisted them in expanding their operations and eventually to the purchase of a larger facility to continue their growth.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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Ted's team implemented a solution for a client who had an ongoing need to extract data from one platform and enter it into another. The manual process they had in place was not only cumbersome and time consuming, but it also resulted in an unclean format. Using proprietary data analysis software, IDEA, the team helped the client extract an entire year of information into a clean format in a matter of hours. Previously, it had taken the client several days to perform the extraction.

"Our efforts on behalf of our client enhanced their timeliness and efficiency," Pettko said. "Using data analysis software in the audit profession gives us the ability to extract information in a fraction of the time, summarize the data and produce high-level analytics to support our audit opinion. Ultimately it's a win-win."

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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When Mark was introduced to a new client, he learned through the course of the conversations about the nature of the business, their clients, and most interestingly, that they were not utilizing all of the tax deductions available in this specific industry. After some research, we determined that they were eligible for large deductions in excess of $1.4 million dollars, which had a huge impact on this family-owned business.

“It felt great to be able to deliver such positive and unexpected news to this small business owner,” DiPietrantonio said. “By immediately amending the tax returns for the prior years in which the statute of limitations had not closed, we were able to secure a significant refund for them.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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One of Joe’s clients had a successful business and was interested in contributing more to their retirement accounts. However, the client was limited by the existing employee benefit plan structure and IRS contribution limitations on their existing structure. Joe’s team was familiar with the structure of their existing plan and offered to do an analysis of their options.

“The Schneider Downs Retirement Plan Solutions Group suggested a cash balance plan and provided an analysis to the business owners which quantified the impact and provided options to allow the client to evaluate the direction they were most comfortable moving forward with.” Bruce said. “The client elected to adopt the cash balance plan and was able to significantly increase contributions into the owners’ retirement accounts. This also enhanced the quality of the retirement benefits for their employees, which in turn helped improve employee retention.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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Evan’s team always worked closely with our clients’ accounting group and Schneider Downs‘ audit team. When the IRS changed the rules on the deductibility of repairs and maintenance versus capitalization of assets, a group of Schneider Downs’ tax specialists performed a deep-dive on the technical rules of this change to develop tax planning strategies for their clients.  In one particular instance, through extensive analysis of the client’s fixed asset ledgers as well as those of related-party commercial rental properties, we were able to find tax savings of approximately $300,000.

“Communication with our clients is always critical,” Ogrodnik said. “Our understanding of new, complex regulations, knowledge of our client’s business and internal workings, and the trust the client had in our experts, allowed us to take advantage of tax rules and garner significant deductions.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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 One of our clients was a large consumer markets company with a global footprint. We learned that the company wanted to improve overall corporate governance and internal controls. Jim’s team was called upon to help with an evaluation since leadership at the company realized the need for a firm with international experience in multiple countries and languages. With the assistance of country-specific resources through Prime Global - one of the largest associations of independent public accounting firms in the world - and a consistent core team based in Pittsburgh, we have been able to provide the expertise necessary to develop and assist the company in building and establishing a global internal audit function, and bringing best practices across their global operations and core processes.

“By accessing industry expertise, assessing risk and pulling in subject matter and international specialists, we were able to direct the company’s plans to implement best practices, mitigate risks, standardize their processes and create efficiencies throughout its operations and business units,” Jim said. “The client has recognized the success of this partnership and has gone on to award us other projects including on-going international location reviews, various operational and process reviews, systems implementation/migration, and fraud investigations.”

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service. 

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Chris' team went to the aid of a family-owned retailer/franchisor that needed to reduce its tax burden to better align with the long-term vision for the business. Schneider Downs' shareholder-led service model positioned the team to have a sophisticated understanding of the client's objectives and leverage opportunities afforded by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

"We helped the client implement a structure to get requisite cash flows to the owners while taking advantage of favorable corporate tax rates, non-U.S. tax planning, and other tax provisions such as QBI and FDII,” said McElroy. “We were able to reduce their overall annual global tax burden by nearly 15% as a result."

Schneider Downs provides Big Thinking and Personal Focus in delivering a variety of services for large and small businesses, both publicly and privately held, as well as nonprofit organizations, government entities and more. Through our commitment to thought leadership and knowledge management, we deliver the solutions our clients need with a personal commitment to service.

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