The Commpliance Group is pleased to announce its hiring of experienced tax professional, Russell “Russ” Miller, as Tax Director and head of the consulting firm’s State and Local Tax Compliance practice.

Russ brings over 15 years of taxation experience specific to the telecommunications industry to The Commpliance Group’s clients. For more than six years Russ was responsible for the tax operations, compliance, and controversy resolution for the US entity of a global multi-billion dollar telecommunications company headquartered in India. In that role Russ identified information and compliance needs, led efforts to install the necessary tax operations and compliance infrastructure, practices and procedures. Through this experience Russ was able to develop a strong ability to bring an organization that is new to the US telecommunications tax requirements up to speed, and identify key infrastructure, processes and procedures that should be implemented. Russ also shared his knowledge of US telecommunications taxation with his domestic and international tax and operations colleagues regarding US tax obligations specifically as they related to the telecommunications industry. Russ has additional experience working for telecommunications providers in the wholesale, mobile, VoIP, prepaid, and online mobile telecommunications equipment sales space.

Russ provides taxation consulting and compliance services to newer telecommunications companies unfamiliar with the wide range of compliance requirements they face, such as registration with, collecting and remitting taxes and fees for the federal government, the states, counties, cities, and multiple other tax jurisdictions, maintaining required exemption documentation, and responding to notices and audits. Russ provides these same services to more established telecommunication service providers who want to outsource the transaction tax function to concentrate on their core competency.

Russ’s representative experiences include:

• Preparing and filing tax and fee returns in various federal, state and local jurisdictions nationwide.
• Registering companies with state and local jurisdictions to initiate compliance.
• Tax lead for efforts to install tax calculation software and related processes and procedures including:
  • Product catalog clean-up
  • Mapping of the product catalog to the tax software
  • Situsing of transactions, especially where physical points of service address, origination and termination were difficult to determine
  • Tax exemption documentation acquisition, storage, and implementation
• Installation of Use Tax compliance processes and procedures
• Performed audit and tax controversy functions including managing audits, negotiating settlements, managing appeals.
• Identified opportunities for and negotiated Voluntary disclosure agreements with state and local government entities to reduce look-back periods and penalties.
• Managed Reverse Audits for identification of overpaid sales tax on purchases.
• Performed Nexus Studies to identify where transaction tax compliance was required.
• Reviewed and identified revenue streams that were not properly being offered for transaction tax.

If your company is interested in consulting with Russ about tax issues or discussing tax compliance reporting needs, you may contact him at:  rpm@commpliancegroup.com or 703-714-1309.