In a bid to help the industry deal with complex tax issues, PricewaterhouseCoopers is offering RICMart, an automated suite of mutual fund tax management and compliance tools.

"Mutual funds spend considerable time and effort calculating tax distributions," said Shawn Baker, PricewaterhouseCoopers Investment Management Leader of Tax Services. "Funds need to be able to quickly and accurately account for capital gains and losses and the other tax implications of their decisions. Furthermore, fund managers need tools that not only record what has been done, but offer predictive analytics to guide their decisions throughout the year."

RICMart is the product of four years' research. It offers end-to-end compliance solutions, automates common tax adjustments and offers year-to-date reporting in Microsoft Excel. With such features as remote access, multi-level security, online retrieval of data for seven years, scalability and pre-designed report formats, RICMart can be used off the shelf or customized.

"Advances in technology have generally bypassed the tax function at mutual funds but RICMart bridges the gap by offering state-of-the-art technology." said Cyrus Daftary, PricewaterhouseCoopers Financial Services Tax Technology Leader.

RICMart is complemented by a series of modules, including a tool for determining the impact of wash sales, which occur when a fund or investor sells a security and buys a substantially identical security within 30 days. The firm reports that with the new suite, managers can shift their analytical focus from number crunching to fund performance assessments.  

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