Tax services
Over the past year, our clients navigated a rapidly evolving tax landscape shaped by economic uncertainty, market volatility and significant legislative change. Throughout this period, RSM tax professionals served as trusted advisors, helping clients understand new requirements, evaluate their implications and make confident decisions that balanced immediate demands with long-term objectives.
We supported organizations complying with new legislation through proactive planning, advised on tax-efficient structures for mergers and acquisitions, and helped multinational businesses align their international footprints with evolving global requirements. We also assisted in identifying available credits and incentives to improve cash flow and reinvest in growth. Collectively, these efforts enabled our clients to address near-term challenges while advancing broader strategic goals.
Driving the future of business
After a year businesses spent preparing for uncertain tax changes, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) became law in July 2025. RSM quickly shifted its focus to help clients understand how the comprehensive new law would affect their organizations, enabling informed decisions ahead of the 2025 tax filing season.
Meanwhile, heightened state audit activity bolstered demand for assistance with complex information requests and reporting from our state and local tax team as tax jurisdictions decoupled from or aligned with the new federal provisions. In addition, increasing mergers and acquisitions across industries led to expanded state and local tax advisory involvement to support deal structuring.
Internationally active clients sought guidance on the immediate and long-term effects of changing tariff regimes—assessing supply chain restructuring, cost pass-through strategies and customs valuation impacts. Simultaneously, the introduction of the Pillar Two global minimum tax by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development required extensive modeling, data preparation and governance support to manage effective tax rate fluctuations and compliance risks across jurisdictions. Looking forward, we continue to advise clients on how this side-by-side agreement with the U.S. may influence global business decisions.
These international developments increased the need for solid transfer pricing frameworks as clients worked to align intercompany pricing with shifting operational footprints while managing audit exposure in an environment becoming more transparent and data driven.
Driving the future of tax
As the middle market evolves, so do our tax services. Technology and AI are now central to our strategy for tax delivery. The launch of our tax digital services (TDS) team marks a significant step forward, bringing together tax technology, data and process expertise to modernize tax functions. Through platform-enabled compliance, data-driven process redesign and custom application development, TDS helps clients improve accuracy, efficiency and insight throughout the tax lifecycle.
Our MyRSM Tax ecosystem boosts automation, transparency and scalability, while our collaboration with tax research firm Blue J® integrates generative AI and predictive analytics into technical tax analysis. Additionally, the licensing of PartnerSight®, our proprietary enterprise partnership tax platform, enables practitioner-driven innovation beyond traditional services: we partner with businesses to technologically transform their in-house tax operations through enhanced insights and automation. Together, these initiatives reflect our dedication to combining human expertise with smart technology to deliver smarter, faster and more forward-looking tax services.
Cross-functional collaboration yields expanded tax credits
The modification and extension of the clean fuel producer credit enacted in the OBBBA made prevailing wage a top priority for one renewable fuel producer. Amid this new tax incentive for 2025, the client faced many hurdles, including setting up new compliance processes, deciphering intricate technical regulations and managing the sale of these credits.
Building on the local tax compliance team’s strong client relationship, our Washington National Tax and market area energy specialists worked closely with the client’s C-suite to address technical credit and regulatory issues. We developed a compliance service to help the producer track repairs and alterations performed by employees, contractors and subcontractors across multiple facilities, enabling the client to qualify for a fivefold increase in the tax credit.
Our energy credit and tax digital services teams worked together to integrate AI technology, automating the review of hours worked and wages paid and providing 24/7 support, leveraging global resources to manage the high volume of client data. The team is also assisting with due diligence to support the sale of the tax credit to interested buyers.
Throughout this process, the producer has viewed RSM as a strategic partner helping to navigate the various challenges. Following the resolution of a particularly challenging issue, the company’s chief financial officer praised the RSM team for their advice and valuable insights. He emailed, “Just a quick note to thank you … for the excellent guidance you’ve been providing, and the hard work you and your team have been putting into our prevailing wage compliance project! ... It’s not always easy to find time to give recognition during the heat of the battle, but you … deserve it!”
