Oracle Financials Strategy

Thanks to the joint Oracle and Marvel promotional campaign, Oracle HQ employees were treated to a private screening of the new "Iron Man" movie before its official release on May 2.

Now, I am not a comic book connoisseur but the movie kicks some serious body part. It's a perfect summer action flick - so run, not walk, to your nearest movie theater this Friday!

One can't help but wonder if, perhaps, Robert Downey Jr. based his Tony "Iron Man" Stark character on a certain other rock star billionaire who we all know and admire around here in Redwood Shores.

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Often on Sunday evenings my thoughts drift to "what can I wear tomorrow?" while I'm preparing dinner or driving home after a great time with friends.  But this past weekend was a little different.  I was looking forward to getting up at 6am on Tuesday morning to gather with 6,000 other women in San Francisco's Moscone Center for the Professional Business Women in California conference.

Why rise at 6am?  Was it for the bagels, cream cheese and hot coffee?  Not!  Is it that fascinating to get up at oh-dark-thirty to take BART along with hundreds of other commuters into the City and meet with women?  Yes!   The opportunity to spend focused time with other women - listening, laughing, learning, living - is uplifting.  It's not what I eat, nor what I hear or even what I see.  It's what I feel - while I'm there and after I leave.

I feel hopeful as I listen to Heather Hopkins share how her mother's experience of growing up poor and ashamed of her clothing was the impetus for her non-profit, My New Red Shoes which provides homeless children in San Francisco clothing for their first day of school.  I feel encouraged as I meet Magatte Wade, a young Senegalese woman whose desire to preserve her heritage launched a beverage company, Adina, that competes with Starbucks for bottled coffee and tea market share.

I feel grateful as I listen to Cokie Roberts share about founding women like Abigail Adams who radically influenced politics and social change.  I feel proud as I listen to Madeline Albright's wit and humor as she shares about her experiences as our first female Secretary of State.

While Abigail Adams, Cokie Roberts and her mom, Linda Boggs, former Ambassador and Representative, as well as Madeline Albright have lived extraordinary lives, they are not unusual women.  Yes, they're bright, intelligent, articulate, courageous, determined and tenacious.  But that's a woman.  No matter what their education, socio-economic status, or nationality -women have consistently found creative solutions to the problems facing their children, their families, and their communities.  Being at the PBWC conference reinvigorates me with the enthusiasm, tenacity, and creativity to continue finding new ways to solve problems - for ourselves, our children, our families, our communities, our nation, our world.

Thanks to all the women at PBWC that nurture my feeling connected and affirmed.

--Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to M. Leroy, 1789.

But the only similarity that can be found between taxes and death is that none are voluntary. Everything else in tax is considerably more regulated.

Taxation systems are not an invention of the modern world. In fact, they have been around for many centuries:

Before civilization had coined-money, taxes were paid to the authorities in different forms: delivering labour services, giving animals, fighting wars, etc. Taxes applied to almost everything: property, movement of goods, livestock, and other forms of economic activities at the time. Failure to pay the due taxes resulted in severe penalties. Nonetheless, there were multiple ways of easing the tax burden: tax contributors could nominate their own substitutes for rendering services or go to war on their behalf, and they could equally apply for exemptions and exceptions.

If we transpose the relative simplicity of taxation in the ancient world to the complexity of today�s global business environment, it becomes obvious that enterprises need to support their taxation requirements (within and across geographies) with powerful and reliable tools.

If you are a user of financial applications, in the role of a tax manager or as a business user, you often are exposed to the taxation aspects of the business you work in.

And Oracle has good news for tax managers: with Release 12, Oracle has delivered E-Business Tax that is a central tax engine where you define, simulate and action all legal regulations for tax treatment, across geographies and across business cycles (Procure-To-Pay and Order-To-Cash). To help you start the configuration of your tax regulations, you can use the seeded tax configuration library with sample tax data for dozens of countries, or choose to rely on a tax provider to seed that tax configuration for you.

Oracle has even better news for non tax users: E-Business Tax allied with the expertise of the tax manager, allows you not to worry about taxes in business transactions. You just carry on with your daily work and tax will be there for you, promptly and accurately.

More information on:
Oracle E-Business Tax Documentation Resources, Release 12 (Metalink note 397158.1)