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With RSI, Cook County introduces a new system that makes it easier to process local taxes.  

RSI’s team of tax experts and a honed methodology for deployment enabled Cook County, Illinois, to go live with their new tax processing system. Cook County is the second-most populous county in the US and their previous system was considered too antiquated to meet the growing needs of the current tax administration. 

The new system is accelerating the process collections of local taxes on a range of products, including:  

  • Tobacco 
  • Motor vehicle sales 
  • Gambling machines 
  • Firearms.  

It’s expected that our collaboration with Cook County will save tens of millions of dollars. It’s also expected that Cook County will see an improvement in efficiency over the next several years, according to Ken Harris, the county’s Deputy Director of Revenue. 

Our platform has automated a fully manual process that once required Cook County residents and businesses to mail in their tax filings, while county employees sent physical letters asking why payments were missing or late. 

“It was pretty antiquated and outdated, it didn’t have the ability for any kind of online tax filing or payment or anything like that,” Harris said, adding the county’s previous system was developed in the 1990s. 

The initial rollout of RSI’s SW in 2017, was to modernize the processing of taxes specifically on hotel rooms, liquor, fuel, and amusements, though Harris expects another 2,000 businesses countywide will begin filing electronically in the next phase of expansion. 

Taxpayers can register, file their returns, pay their taxes, submit service requests, and receive electronic messages from the county through the application. This, in turn, gives Harris and his team an easier way to analyze tax data, rather than sifting through thousands of paper returns, he said. 

“This will give us the ability to have detailed line-by-line information, which helps for compliance purposes,” Harris said. “It’s a huge part of our strategy not to just generate more revenue for the county, but to equitably administer the taxes. We want a fair playing field across the board.” 

 

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