In many states, corporations have multiple filing options that both positively and negatively affect their tax position. To properly evaluate the impact, tax departments must perform a multi-year impact analysis, and must also measure the impact across a range of income forecasts. Unfortunately, with today's spreadsheet solutions, tax professionals can provide little more than a high-level, single-year, single-forecast analysis. To perform in-depth, accurate analysis, companies need a robust, automated system that can handle the required calculation complexity.

Liquid Engines STx is just such a system. With STx, all filing options are parameter based. With a single change, tax professionals can quickly see the impact of every filing election. STx takes care of the complicated multi-year calculation logic across a range of financial results. Because of the simplicity of scenario creation, each election can now be fully analyzed and understood, enabling companies to make the best choice to optimize their tax positions. With STx, companies get a comprehensive picture of the effectiveness of each election, including:

Filing Separate or Combined
Some states provide companies with the option either to file separately or to be included in a combined return. STx users model, analyze, and document the tax impact of either choice in a matter of minutes simply by creating a combined filing group and adding the appropriate members.

Worldwide or Water's-Edge Election
Some unitary states allow companies to exclude some foreign entities from the combined filing by electing Water's Edge. In some cases, this decision can be in effect for multiple years. With STx, users easily model the effect of this election by changing the filing option for their unitary state.

Check-the-Box for Flow-Through Entities
Some states dictate how a partnership must file, ignoring an entity's federal check-the-box election. Other states have different flow-through treatments for different types of partnerships, or require allocation of partnership income rather than combined apportionment. STx tax professionals easily understand the impact of these rules by changing their check-the-box elections from year to year, and modeling any changes to the partnership treatment rules.

Foregoing Carryback of NOLs
Some states provide an election to forego NOL carryback, allowing an NOL to be carried forward without first attempting carryback. STx keeps track of which states allow this election, enabling a user to simply make the election for their entities and watch the ripple effects cascade across years in their multi-year scenario.

Apportionment Method
For industries with unique apportionment methods, STx also offers robust “what if” apportionment modeling capabilities that make it possible to quickly determine the full tax impact of M&A activity, changes in the business forecast or legal entity structure, proposed legislation, and audit settlements. Examples of STx ’s specific industry measurements include:

• Revenue miles, revenue tons, takeoffs/landings, and tons handled for transportation;
• Subscribers and audience size for broadcast; 
• Banking receipts and deposits for financial services;
• Barrels and pipeline traffic units for energy.

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