Donuts to Dollars:
Winn-Dixie's 10% Time Savings on Tax Research

Facing tricky state and local tax problems, multistate grocery chain finds a great solution with CCH

Sell less than a half-pint of ice cream to a consumer in Florida, and it’s taxable — but more than a half-pint is free of sales tax. In another state, there’s the six-donut rule: Sell fewer than six donuts and sales tax applies; more than six is considered nontaxable.

Those are just two of the sales-tax challenges Winn-Dixie faces. The Fortune 500 retailer operates more than 500 grocery stores and five distribution centers across the Southeast. Rich Tansi, Manager, Sales/Use & Property Tax at Winn-Dixie, uses IntelliConnect® to stay on top of sales and property tax issues in the five states where the company does business: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

His most recent project: figuring taxability for retrofitting the company’s stores with energy-efficient lighting fixtures. "In some states, both parts and labor are taxable; in some it’s just the parts, and in others it’s not taxable at all," Tansi says.

"It was easy to research this issue using IntelliConnect," he says. "I took the time to set up IntelliConnect the way I wanted it, so that it opens right to the five states where we do business. I put in a search request and got what could be the answer for all five states at once. That saved me a lot of time compared with looking at each state one at a time."

Tansi says IntelliConnect has saved at least 10 percent of the time he previously would have spent doing tax research. In addition, IntelliConnect has saved significant outside costs. "A lot of research would have been pushed out of the department to our public accounting firm or the consultants we use for property tax issues," he says.

"I can do that here now, because it takes me less time to use IntelliConnect than it does to write out the question, send it to our outside accounting firm and wait for an answer."