Success Story - Tegna

Challenge

For TEGNA Inc., a media company with 64 local TV stations and two radio stations across 51 U.S. markets, advertising revenue is anything but predictable. Political cycles drive sharp fluctuations from year to year: even-numbered years bring heavy local and national campaign spending, while every fourth year, presidential races amplify the surge. Battleground states shift with every election cycle, causing revenue, and the apportionment factors tied to it, to swing dramatically from state to state.

Those fluctuations made state estimates increasingly difficult to manage. Historically, TEGNA calculated state extension payments using prior-year apportionment factors. The method worked in stable years, but as revenue and apportionment shifts became more extreme, it grew too risky.

“We had a presidential cycle where Maine ad revenue shot up unexpectedly,” said Courtney King, Sr. Manager, Tax Compliance. “We underpaid, proving our traditional approach needed to change.”

Adding to the challenge, TEGNA’s estimation process relied on large, interconnected Excel workbooks—one for federal and another for state calculations—with formulas growing increasingly fragile over time. Each state required different rates, apportionment adjustments, and quarterly percentages. “Every time something changed, we had to check whether a formula still worked,” said King. “It was easy to miss a surtax or rate update.”

With a small team and tight deadlines, there was little time for review or corrections. Each update meant rekeying data and rebuilding calculations from scratch. “We needed something that could model the differences across all 50 states without the manual effort and risk,” said King.

Solution

TEGNA implemented CSC Corptax^® State Planner to automate its state estimate and extension process. The company already used Corptax for provision and compliance, so expanding into state planning was a natural step. Implementation support from Corptax^® Professional Services helped configure the system for TEGNA’s multiple unitary groups and unique apportionment structures. The team ran both systems in parallel for one quarter, then fully transitioned to State Planner the next.

State Planner now handles all state estimate calculations in one place. It integrates with CSC Corptax^® Compliance, automatically pulling existing data from the database. The tool lets TEGNA mix prior-year and current-year inputs by state—so users can, for example, use prior-year property values for one state while applying current-year sales for another. “That flexibility is huge for us,” said King. “Election years are so unpredictable, we need to model different hypotheticals fast.”

The system automatically calculates state taxable income, apportionment factors, estimated taxes, and payment spreads by quarter, while identifying the lowest tax required to avoid underpayment penalties. When TEGNA modifies a revenue assumption or apportionment factor, State Planner instantly recalculates results—no spreadsheet editing or formula checks required.

Built-in integrations also improved collaboration. Using CSC Corptax^® Office, the team tracks quarterly payments and shares liability data directly with its co-source return preparer. They even apply a five percent cushion to extension payments for conservative coverage. “Now we can plan and post in one system,” King said. “It’s fast, accurate, and transparent.”

Results

TEGNA’s results were immediate and measurable:

Reduced shortfall risk and achieved near-perfect accuracy. State Planner’s real-time modeling replaced estimates based on outdated factors, ensuring filings landed right on target—even in volatile election years. In one key state, the recalculation nearly mirrored the final return, confirming the new process worked exactly as intended.

“That accuracy gave us confidence we’d been missing,” King said. “We could finally trust our estimates.”

Achieved significant time savings. What once took ~40 hours of spreadsheet setup now takes about a day in State Planner. Hidden formula errors are gone, and recalculations that used to take hours now happen in seconds. “It’s not just faster—it’s cleaner,” said King. “We spend our time reviewing results, not debugging formulas.”

Built confidence through transparency. State Planner provides instant visibility across all of TEGNA’s entities, giving the team a clear view of how spikes in sales—like political ad booms in battleground states—affect state liabilities. With everything centralized and automated, the team can validate results at a glance and plan with confidence.

Empowered a lean tax team to manage complexity. With a small tax team, TEGNA now handles complex, high-volume state estimates confidently and independently. The centralized system also strengthens collaboration with outside preparers and creates a foundation for proactive planning in future election cycles.

“State Planner gives us control,” said King. “We know what’s driving the numbers, and we can respond quickly. That’s a big deal when the ground is always shifting.”

By adopting Corptax State Planner, TEGNA transformed its state estimate process from manual and uncertain to automated and precise. The team gained accuracy, saved days of work each cycle, and built a scalable process ready for the next surge in political advertising, wherever it may occur.