OptiMedica
Getting a Tax Strategy in Focus
Based in San Francisco with operations worldwide, OptiMedica maximized tax deductions from prior years’ losses with VPTax. From 2005 – 2010: VPTax provided Corporate tax strategy and tax return work. In 2010 OptiMedica agreed to sell part of its business to Topcon Corp of Japan. VPTax Expanded Mission: Structure the transaction so as to maximize tax deductions from the company’s losses in previous years.
VPTax did a “great job” on the tax issue. “It was a very complex calculation involving multiple years of history and it came out very favorably for us,” said Dave Satterfield, Director of Finance. “Their work had to be scrutinized by the auditors and our other accounting firms, and it passed all the scrutiny.”
Next Chapter: Following the transaction: OptiMedica needed to resize its business model and expenses to match its smaller size.
VPTax proactively assisted in this process. While previously handling OptiMedica’s income, international, sales and use, and property tax compliance and consulting, VPTax quickly modified their service offering to match the reduced R&D nature of the post-transaction OptiMedica.
Results:
In March 2012, OptiMedica moved to a new larger global headquarters and is now up to 100 employees worldwide. Throughout this growth, VPTax has remained the company’s lead tax advisers. Optimedica values the continuity of personnel at VPTax.
Dave Satterfield, Director of Finance says: “I look at VPTax as my corporate tax people, and I rely on them, as does our CFO,”
“With a large audit firm, the lower levels of people, the ones you see most often, are changing all the time. With VPTax we don’t have that. We know the principals there, and we go to them whenever we have an issue and we know we will get the best answer possible.”