Optimize Your City Taxes Through Technology
The Challenge
A private equity firm based in San Francisco, this Monaeo Enterprise client needed to manage up to 2.2% in local taxes tied to employee activity in the city. With remote work reducing in-city presence, the firm sought an audit-defensible, privacy-respecting solution to track employee location data.
Manual methods lacked the accuracy required. After seeing Monaeo’s success elsewhere, the firm implemented Monaeo Enterprise, which delivered auditable data, protected employee privacy, was easy to use across HR and Finance, and showed a clear return on investment.
The Solution
A manual approach would not provide the level of accuracy required to help our client achieve their goals. Learning of Monaeo’s success in helping organizations tackle local tax obligations in other cities, the client selected and began the implementation of Monaeo Enterprise.
Our client needed a technology offering that would enable them to:
- Accurately monitor employee working time within the city of San Francisco
- Streamline tax calculations
- Provide reliable data in the event of future audits
- Create a possibility for tax reductions due to their dispersed workforce
Our client decided to leverage the Monaeo Enterprise smartphone app across their entire employee population as the means to monitor and collect the work location of their employees.
This enabled:
- Active tracking of employees’ working location
- The ability for employees to control when location monitoring was on
- Quick review and validation of their reported working location as needed by employees
Because employee privacy was paramount, Monaeo Enterprise was able to configure stripped-down HR/Finance dashboards and reporting that only provided a binary “In San Francisco” vs “Outside San Francisco.”
Payroll Expense Tax: 0.38% (flat-rate) of total payroll expense over applicable thresholds
Gross Receipts Tax: 0.56% (up to) of receipt for Services category over applicable thresholds
Homelessness Tax: 0.60% (up to) applicable to revenue thresholds (HGR)
2024/2025 Adjustments: Expected to compensate for the loss of revenue
Key Benefits
- Prevented overpayment of local SF taxes
- Full ROI recognized in Q1 of implementation
- No intrusive tracking
- Privacy-first solution trusted by HR and employees
- Deployed in under 30 days
- Every day prior risked inaccurate reporting
- Accurate, jurisdiction-based data
- Finance now has variable proof to defend tax filings
Every day without this information represented an additional day of potentially inaccuracies. As such, the Monaeo Enterprise team was able to work with the client to deliver the solution within a month. Now, their finance team has the information to accurately calculate their San Francisco city tax obligations, ensuring accurate payment without adding extra work. Plus, they have the data to substantiate their reporting in the event of an audit.
Because of their Monaeo Enterprise solution, our client is able to prevent an overpayment of taxes, save a significant amount, and recognizing a full ROI in the first quarter of use, all while protecting their employee’s privacy.