Tax & AccountingMay 02, 2025
CCH Integrator Delivers Deferred Tax Clarity for Intrepid Travel
Intrepid Travel is a rapidly growing international business. Achieving revenue of $626m in 2024 (+17% YoY), it has laid the foundation for its purpose-led expansion plans in the years ahead. But as it grows, Intrepid must support the tax requirements for a growing number of legal entities and finance teams.
Company details
Name: Intrepid Travel
Web: www.intrepidtravel.com
Size: Offices in 31 countries, operating over 60 entities
Solutions
Benefits
- Accurate and auditable global tax calculations
- Deferred tax asset clarity post-COVID
- Centralised documentation for Big 4 tax partner
- High-trust engagement and support from Wolters Kluwer
Managing deferred tax assets across multiple jurisdictions and ensuring accuracy in tax provisioning previously became a challenge as the company’s revenues and tax base returned to a healthy financial trajectory post-COVID-19. To support their global tax reporting needs and onward processing to their Big Four professional services partner, Intrepid Travel implemented CCH Integrator’s Direct Tax module to strengthen accuracy and transparency and streamline governance and reporting.
Ensuring Accurate Calculations and Strengthening Compliance
Previously relying on Excel to manage global tax provisioning, Intrepid Travel’s Group Tax Manager, Ben Lee, recognised emerging needs as operations scaled. “With operations resuming and growing post the COVID period, we recognized the need for a reliable software solution to calculate deferred tax assets for our financial reports. With entities in over 30 countries, the calculation requirements were too complex for spreadsheets,” he said.
Having successfully used CCH Integrator in prior roles, Ben reviewed market offerings and then made the case for its implementation at Intrepid Travel – a decision underpinned by both his confidence in the platform’s accuracy and a narrow window to deploy it before financial year-end.
I spoke with another provider, but it was prohibitively expensive and didn’t offer the same certainty. I knew the team at Wolters Kluwer and CCH Integrator could get us across the line fast and reliably.
Building Governance and Audit-Ready Confidence
The benefits of the platform were immediate. CCH Integrator enabled Intrepid Travel to consolidate deferred tax calculations across 60+ legal entities efficiently and in a format that could be provided directly to external tax partners. “We provide all our workings and analysis to our Big Four advisors using the output from the system. This has simplified this previously complex consolidation.”
This shift not only improved governance but also strengthened audit readiness. “We’re audited annually, and the auditors now have more accurate and verified calculations for every country with CCH Integrator. Having that data cleanly consolidated has also given our senior finance team greater confidence in the numbers and eliminated last-minute surprises,” Ben said.
With accurate data centralised, the tax team has shifted its focus from time-consuming data gathering to high-value tasks like analysis and review.
Previously, I was manually consolidating tax positions for dozens of countries– now with CCH Integrator, I spend that time reviewing for accuracy instead of pulling numbers together.
Standardising Documentation Across Global Teams
To ensure consistency, Intrepid implemented a standardised tax process using CCH Integrator that local finance managers across regions now complete, and the payoff is already visible. “It took time this year to train 30 countries, on CCH Integrator, but now we’re seeing better-quality information and we’re building capability across the network,” he said.
The long-term goal is to move to quarterly submissions from each region, increasing the frequency and accuracy of reporting while embedding a rhythm of governance. “It’s a work in progress,” Ben noted, “but we expect that by the end of 2025, we’ll be in a review-only position for the tax team with CCH Integrator creating significant time savings across global teams.”
Trusted Support from Wolters Kluwer
From implementation through to daily use, Ben credits the Wolters Kluwer team with delivering exemplary support and guidance. “We had one main point of contact for implementation, training, and entity setup, and they were excellent,” he said. “Given our tight timeline, their ability to stick to the plan, adjust when needed, and deliver CCH Integrator on time was critical – and they absolutely did that.”
Even as the company expands, Ben is confident that CCH Integrator can grow with them.
We may increase our entity count and potentially explore future modules like BEPS Pillar Two when required, but for now, this solution gives us the compliance, control, and clarity we need – backed by a trusted support team.
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