SAO Regime - Tax Systems opportunities

By Simon Godley

Whilst I sense that the Senior Accounting Officer (SAO) legislation, in which all FDs of companies with UK turnover of over £200m have to annually certify the accuracy of their tax reporting systems or face personal penalties, is moving up the financial agenda and maybe being taken more seriously by FDs/Heads of Tax, this has had so far very little impact on in-house tax teams needing to hire someone to do a review.

In the last 12 months since the note on this appeared in the pre-budget report, I have seen no more than 3-4 situations where a company which is affected by the legislation actually actively seek to recruit a tax auditor / accountant to perform a tax systems review. This is possibly not a major surprise as:

a. we have been in a major recession and companies have severely struggled to increase headcount within an in-house tax function, for both perm and temp roles

b. where a company has a well established in-house tax function, someone within the department has had to take on this review work in addition to their usual duties

c. a number of companies will get their regular accountants / tax advisers to do a review of this, possibly as part of a tax audit

I suspect more contract roles will appear for this type of review work over the next 12 months, as this issue climbs up the financial reporting agenda.

In the meantime, I am working on one specific SAO related Tax Accountant role with a London based financial services group. This is looking for someone to work on an initial 3 months project to assess and make recommendations on accuracy of tax data in the accounting system. The company is happy to pay up to £600 per day, and so any interested parties should contact me on sg@talentpoolselection.com to discuss further.

Talentpool - Poll on why people resign

Talentpool is currently collecting data on why tax people resign from their job and move on from their employer, trying to get some real-time data as to what motivates people to leave a company or a job role.

To participate and contribute in this, please click through to the Poll set up on LinkedIn.

Thanks in advance.
Simon Godley

KPMG makes further cuts in UK tax practice

Source: AccountancyAge.com

KPMG plans to cut jobs in its UK tax department in response to the recession and a slump in demand for merger and acquisition-related tax advice.

The UK’s third biggest accounting firm emailed UK staff today to tell them that it needs to cut jobs in its tax and people services department in the UK.

In an email to staff Richard Bennison, chief operating officer at KPMG, told staff it needed to cut the jobs in response to a changing market for tax services.

An industry source said that a couple of hundred jobs could be cut. A spokesman for KPMG confirmed that the firm planned to cut jobs in its UK tax practice, but declined to give a likely figure for job cuts. He said that it was still consulting staff.

Earlier this year, KPMG offered UK staff the chance to do a four-day working week, or take extended unpaid leave, in an effort to avoid redundancies if the economy deteriorated further.

The accountancy profession has been hit by a wave of redundancies over the past year. Firms including Deloitte, Grant Thornton and PKF have announced plans to cut hundreds of jobs in expectation of slower revenue growth this year.

Thousands of redundancies in financial services have cut the amount of advisory work on offer, while merger and acquisition activity has also slowed dramatically.

SG Comment: This appears to be the next phase, effectively 2nd round of heavy cost cutting, from one of the Big 4 firm's tax function. Although in the case of KPMG, their clever tactic was to lose cost and not people in their first round of cuts, by putting people into 4 days per week contracts. From my initial warning note Credit Crunch - Impact on Tax Jobs in Sept 2007, we have now seen a few waves of job cuts in the tax market, the first round with the Big 4 taking place in December 2008. There have been whole teams of tax structuring people (not in-house tax) cut from some of the investment banks, and in-house tax teams across industry / commerce have generally had to make some reductions, although quite small, on average shaving c.5-10% of staff from a tax team. This is a generalism as I think a lot of in-house tax teams have remained the same size, as I predicted back in September 2007. My estimation is that we are now approx 12-15 months away from companies being able to recruit more freely for growth, although I suspect it could take longer as I think that these 'green shoots' that I keep hearing about could be quite classic false dawn.

Tax Market - Reflecting on 2008

By Simon Godley

Firstly, I would like to wish all readers of this tax blog and all professionals within the in-house tax market a very good Christmas and happy and peaceful New Year.

This has been the year in which the credit crunch problem has finally crystallised and has hit all the markets very hard - the stock market, the general economy and more recently the employment market.

My first blog posting about how the credit crunch might affect in-house tax jobs was in September 2007, prompted by the major banks going on recruitment freezes. At that time, the market didn't feel too good, but we could not predict the financial tsunami that hit us 3 months ago. These hiring freezes didn't stay on during the first half of 2008, but since October / November, it's not just the banks which are on hiring freezes, but the majority of the UK commerce/industry market.

This is going to take a long while to untangle, but I intend to update this blog on the state of the tax job market during 2009, and hopefully this time next year things won't look quite so bleak.

Simon Godley

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

I think it is clear that industry now will be as flexible as possible for in-house tax execs regarding working hours and flexible / home working, within reason. Tax roles which are full time (5 days) with one day working from home are becoming easier to negotiate. The job I'm featuring this week is a VAT Manager role with a banking group, and I think worthy of a feature as the company will consider candidates on either a full time or 4 days per week basis.

VAT Manager - Banking Group
London £65,000 - £75,000 + Bonus + Bens
See More Details

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

If, in amongst this downturn that we are experiencing (which I think still has a few shock waves yet to hit us) we see tax jobs being cut, I think people in the very specialists roles will potentially be the safest. When I say specialist roles, I am thinking of areas such as transfer pricing, in-house tax compliance and tax technology.

Transfer Pricing as an area has just boomed over the last 5-6 years, and many more people globally have specialised in it, and have chosen it as a successful career path. There always seems to be a global transfer pricing conference being organised at an exclusive international location, attended by the best brains in the transfer pricing world. I think also because of the onus on compliance and documentation within transfer pricing, there will be a need for it irrespective of how well business is doing.

Which brings me on to my featured job of the week, which is a specialist transfer pricing role with an economics bias within a non-Big Four niche consultancy in London:

Transfer Pricing Consultant - Niche Consultancy
London £40,000 - £70,000, depending on experience
See More Details

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

This week I refer to the interim tax market, which I feel will most likely remain strong during a downturn, that's if there becomes pressure on in-house tax departments not to recruit permanent members. Things would have to get very tough for this to follow. The job below is very suitable for an ex-Head of Tax, who may have moved onto the contracting market after a number of years in a senior permanent capacity in-house.

Senior Tax Adviser - Interim
Surrey £600 - £800 per day
See More Details

Accountancy firms put recruitment on hold.....but tax is safe??

Source: AccountancyAge.com





Research reveals about 57% of UK’s top accountancy firms are putting recruitment on hold.

About 57% of UK’s top accountancy firms are going to reduce staff numbers or keep them the same next year, according to the latest research by online recruitment group cvmail, part of media giant Thomson Reuters.

Although only 5% of firms said they actually planned to cut staff, the survey signalled the first significant pause in the dramatic growth of accountancy firms since the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

‘The effect of the credit crunch on top accountancy firms has been felt in a slowdown in corporate finance work and may feed through into consultancy work,’ Andy Eddleston, cvmail commercial manager, said.

‘However, their core audit and assurance and tax work should be largely unaffected. It is hoped that the vacuum created by the slowdown in areas like IPOs will be filled with rescue and recovery work.’

SG comment: Reading the results of this article are no surprise, but I don't agree that tax departments will be largely unaffected. Some of the biggest fees that are made by top accounting firms are from lucrative tax consultancy projects on M&A deals or tax structuring advice. In a downturn economy, this fee income will drop dramatically, and the result will be to cut staff in these departments. Tax compliance departments may be less affected.

For more analysis on this, read my article on Recession, Redundancy and Re-hiring

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

This week I am revisiting and featuring the area of tax automation and/or tax compliance technology. Clearly a specialist area within tax, but one that seems to have filtered into multinationals that take tax reporting seriously. Consulting firms have developed teams within their tax offering that will purely advise multinational groups on how to improve and streamline their tax reporting and compliance processes, but are not looking to sell a specific tax software product.

Below is an example of this, being an excellent and forward thinking opportunity for someone with either a detailed tax compliance/reporting background from industry, or someone who knows their way around SAP/Oracle financial reporting systems:

Tax Manager - Tax Compliance Systems
London £55,000 - £90,000, depending on experience
See More Details

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

Despite the reported troubles that the banking sector is experiencing at the moment, it certainly hasn't stopped them looking for tax executives for in-house roles when the need arises. This week I have heard of a couple of senior level EMEA type tax roles being recruited for, which backs up my view that in-house tax roles are generally safe during a down market, unless they are supporting a business or sector which is very exposed to the specific credit crises.

Here is a role which I am currently working on with a major UK bank:

Tax Projects Manager - London
£75,000 - £80,000 + Bonus + Bens
Click here for more details

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

This week's job highlight is a senior end tax planning role that I am working on for a large US multinational, based in London. This type of role is fairly uncommon, given that it is working almost exclusively on tax planning across the EMEA & Asia region and tax-led corporate transactions work. The role is part of a flat structure tax team, that basically deals with all tax planning for the group outside the US. The group tax function has a separate team dedicated to the tax compliance and reporting. This role also carries a very competitive salary package, including a final salary pension scheme, which is now very rare to see for new appointments.

Senior Tax Planning Manager, London
c.£85,000 + Car + Bonus + Final Salary Pension
Click here for more details

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

The theme for this week is very much in-house indirect tax roles. I am currently working on 3 VAT/Indirect Tax Manager positions with large group companies. These roles will be mostly focused on VAT, but some roles can include other taxes e.g. PAYE/employment taxes or very specialist areas such as stamp duty or landfill tax. Because of the specialist knowledge and experience involved, there is usually a scarcity of candidates with the right skills.

A couple of examples are:

Indirect Tax Manager - Thames Valley
Click here for more info

VAT / Indirect Tax Manager - Surrey
Click here for more info

BP uses internal tax faculty as recruitment tool

I only became aware recently that BP had set up an internal tax faculty to help with both attracting new talent into their tax team, and for longer term retention of people. The BP tax team is very large, with something like 150 in-house tax staff, so I guess having a dedicated tax faulty within the company can be easily justified.

Their Corporate Tax Director, John Bartlett, initiated this 2 years ago. Like most large corporates, they were struggling to recruit high calibre tax professionals from the external market. "The tax recruitment market had evolved and we could no longer rely on the professional firms and Revenues releasing a stream of talented individuals into industry," Bartlett said.

The tax faculty is based within BP's already established virtual university. Here tax professionals can develop their skills from classroom-based courses, self-led modules and on-the-job training.

"The financial reward package is always important but in an increasingly transparent market, it can be a given with candidates already knowing the salaries that are generally available," Bartlett says. "Now candidates want to know where the job might lead, the variety of progression opportunities and what track record the company can demonstrate of realising them for its people."

BP's programme offers career development frameworks that will seek to motivate and develop a tax professional comparable to that of practice Bartlett explains.

To date, the programme has been a roaring success, one that Bartlett describes as 'very powerful' in attracting and retaining tax staff all over the world especially lesser known tax networks including Russia, Vietnam, Korea, Azerbaijan and Indonesia.

From past experience, I know that BP have never really had a problem with retaining tax staff. Because of the massive size and scale of the global group, they have been able to offer tax professionals a career progression plan, including secondments to other parts of finance and overseas placements, which is always an effective retention tool. However BP's method is easy to replicate and other multinationals such as Shell and GE have also established their own tailored versions.

The above quotes come from the article "The tax talent pool is diminishing" by Jo Faith in the April 2008 issue of International Tax Review (www.internationaltaxreview.com)

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

This week is about in-house transfer pricing roles. It is becoming common place now for a company, whether it be a large or very large international group, to have in place an in-house transfer pricing (TP) specialist or in some cases a whole TP team. I commented on this blog back in October 2007 and in January 2008 on the growing importance and complexity of transfer pricing for a commercial Head of Tax. Like with VAT/indirect taxes or possibly an Employment Tax specialist, if a large international group does not have someone in-house dedicated to managing the group's TP issues, then the group could quickly find itself under investigation.

Tansfer Pricing Manager - Banking Group
London £50,000 - £80,000 + Bens
See More Details

Tax Jobs - How recession proof?

I subscribe to a few e-mail newsletters from various sources, one of which is The Motley Fool. They send through loads of information, opinions and recommendations about financial services products, and it's all quite good, honest, independent stuff.

Recently they sent through a brief article on which job sectors tend to be most recession proof. According to them, retail, consumer product manufacture, travel and hospitality businesses are usually hardest hit in a recession as people spend less on luxuries and leisure. Meanwhile vital industries such as health care and energy tend to weather the storm far better.

They also reveal that the Top 10 recession proof jobs in the UK are:

IT security professional
Project manager
Software tester
Computer programmer/developer
Network engineer
Business analyst
Pharmaceutical/medical sales
Child care worker
Web designer
Viral marketing professional

So it got me thinking how recession proof are tax jobs? Obviously, tax didn't make it into the top 10 of the above survey.

One argument is that surely we always need tax people, irrespective of how well the economy is doing? How does that saying go - there's nothing more certain in life than death and taxes? Having worked in tax recruitment during the last slump (2001 - 2003), I can safely say that this is not the case during a recession. The tax departments of the Big Four were heavily cut down, through 2 or 3 rounds of redundancies. Redundancies started off as voluntary in 2001, where people could opt to have their roles redundant, then in 2002 it got worse and sizeable numbers (into the 100s) of Big Four tax people were simply had to leave. I seem to remember that the most vulnerable seemed to be Tax Partners that were not big billers, and Senior Managers who were not going to achieve promotion to Partner. People in ACA / CTA training contracts were safe.

In-house tax teams of corporates and banks were not as badly affected, and in comparison, were relatively safe. With the exception of tax specialists working for companies in the high-tech sector or anything remotely like a dot com business. They were not safe, as it was those companies (and speculative high risk companies like Enron) which led us to the disaster in the first place.

So why the safety difference between Big Four/practice, and industry? This is because Big Four firms always (without exception) over-recruit during the good times - there is a 'war for talent' in the market and they look to seize all good tax candidates that are made available to them. If it is a bull market, herd like behaviour follows across the Big Four.

Commerce/Industry can't do this - a company can only recruit tax professionals for very specific roles, and has to go through a number of layers of approval before a recruitment process starts, so the hiring is much more controlled. Then when the downturn comes, if that company is particularly exposed in that downturn, then tax jobs may be at risk, otherwise they will be fairly safe.

I'm not going to make any predictions, but if I still worked in tax today, and given the looming financial problems, I would possibly prefer to be a Head of Tax for an energy or pharma company rather than a Senior Manager in a financial services tax team of a Big Four.

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

I have picked up recently a couple more in-house indirect tax/VAT roles, generally at the experienced Manager level, c.£60-70k. Whilst these are specialist roles, I get the feeling from Heads of Tax that the VAT/indirect tax position of a group can be as critical as the CT/direct tax side. This is particularly the case if the group is either loss making or not paying CT, in which case the majority of the creative tax planning has to come from the VAT/indirect work.

Indirect Tax & Transfer Pricing Manager - Home Counties
£60,000 - £65,000 + Car + Bonus
See More Details

European VAT Manager - Surrey
£60,000 - £70,000 + Bens
See More Details

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

This week I am featuring two roles that both have a focus on US tax reporting. They are roles that come up quite often, particularly amongst the large US groups that have to follow the complex US financial reporting rules. Typically based within a European or EMEA head office, London or South East region, the roles are usually at Senior Tax Accountant/Manager level, and will mostly involve calculation of tax provisions under local and US Gaap rules, and possibly including both current and deferred tax. As you will expect, it is difficult to find many candidates that are doing this type of work, or able to do it, for two reasons. Firstly, it is a narrow/specialist sub-set of tax reporting, and follows complex rules, and so is quite difficult stuff. Also, many tax advisers avoid it to try to get onto the perceived higher quality, more interesting tax planning work. I think if you like tax compliance/spreadsheet work, and persevere and become good at it, then like many specialist areas of tax, it can be quite lucrative.


International Tax Manager (US Group) - Central London
£60,000 - £65,000 + Bens
See More Details


Tax Manager (US Group) - West London
£50,000 - £70,000 + Bens
See More Details

In House Tax People Moves - February 2008

By Simon Godley

International Power Plc has recently appointed David Smith as the new Head of Group Tax. David joins from Reuters Plc, where he was Head of International Tax. David has an impressive background, and has progressed quickly in his career, having originally trained with Arthur Andersen in the mid-90s before his first move into industry with Reuters.

Tesco has recently appointed Bob Fitzsimmons as their new Global VAT Director, based in the Cheshunt headquarters. Bob’s previous position was as Head of Indirect Tax (Rest of World) for Japan Tobacco, based in Geneva. With an initial background in HMC&E, Bob has worked as an in-house international VAT adviser since 1990.

BP Plc's group tax function has recently hired James Dennison as a Senior Tax Adviser. James joins from Unilever, where he developed his tax career over a 10 year period, joining as a UK Tax Accountant in 1997 and progressing to Head of Tax for Asia, Africa, Middle East & Turkey, based in Singapore. James originally qualified as a CTA with KPMG in 1996.

Leading Central London office property specialist Derwent London has hired David Westgate as their new Group Tax Manager. David originally comes from a finance background in industry before specialising in corporate tax. David was previously Tax & Treasury Director for Sunguard, a financial services software company.


Please contact Simon Godley on 07771 762353 or e-mail to: sg@talentpoolselection.com if you would like to announce a new tax appointment for someone or for yourself on this blog.

State of the tax job market?.......and let's be honest!

By Simon Godley

I've just read an article in one of the tax magazines (in a supplement focused on careers) whereby a number of recruiters are asked for their views on the state of the current tax market. The difficulty with such articles is that I'm not sure we are hearing the absolute true facts of what's happening, but merely a collage of comments filled with quite a lot of spin, that merely act as a sort of announcement advert for each of the recruiters' businesses.

For example, when one recruiter was asked about the Big Four firms, the comment was that most of the top 20 firms (let's assume that includes the Big Four) are set to increase head count. The fact is that currently two of the Big Four in London have pretty much put a complete hold on recruiting tax people.

Also, I think to play down what is happening in the London banking sector is not right - I have just come back from a meeting where I have learnt that 40 jobs of c.200 staff in the London office of a bank have just been slashed in the last 2 weeks.

On the subject of what's happening in commerce, one comment is that there is a demand for tax people within the FTSE 100 to grow their team. Again, I don't think this is the case. If you look at the size of a typical FTSE 100 tax department over a 10 year period, unless there has been a major structural change with the company e.g. it has been taken over, or has merged with another group, then the size of the tax department will hardly change. In-house tax departments don't grow in the same respect than, for example, a Big Four middle markets tax team may look to grow. Within a corporate, there is a fairly well defined remit of work that needs to be done, and that work will require a fairly fixed number of tax professionals to do it.

Basically when the broader enonomy has been hit with fears, and we have been recently - Northern Rock, sub-prime lending, rogue traders at Soc Gen to name a few, then the tax job market is not immediately or majorly affected. It is someway down the hit list of areas that are affected, however if this starts to have a major impact on organisations' profitability (particularly the likes of the Big Four) then I'm afraid that no-one is safe.

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

This week I am focusing on a couple of new roles for in-house Tax Managers, opportunities to work in a group in a stand-alone tax capacity. These roles come up quite regularly within either the smaller FTSE groups or as European Tax Managers for a US or other overseas parent groups. These roles tend to be more suitable for tax professionals who are already in industry, have worked in industry for some years, and therefore can tackle a broad range of issues (CT, VAT, employment tax) that are thrown at them. These roles tend to be less suitable for Big Four trained Tax Managers looking for a first move out to industry, they will tend to look for roles in the larger FTSE groups with bigger and more structured tax departments.


European Tax Manager - London
£60,000 - £70,000 + Bonus + Bens
See More Details


Group Tax Manager - Surrey or London
£75,000 - £85,000 + Bens
See More Details

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

This week, I'm just highlighting a couple of UK PLC Tax Manager roles which are currently active, and absolute classic first move roles for Tax Assistant Managers / Tax Managers within the Big Four / Top 10 firms, having completed their ACA/CTA training contracts. The market is still very short on that sort of candidate profile, the Big Four remaining to do quite well to retain their tax staff.

Tax Manager - FTSE 250 Group (Northern Home Counties)
£55,000 - £70,000 + Car + Bens
See More Details

Tax Manager - FTSE 100 Banking Group (London)
£50,000 - £60,000 + Bonus + Bens
See More Details

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

This week I have a focus on banks ie tax roles in investment banks. Since my credit crunch article back in September 2007 on the impact on tax jobs in the City, it would seem that the panic is over (for the time being) and recruitment is back on. Although clearly 2008 will be a year where we see the negative impact on bonuses in the City, which I suspect will be of the order of 25-50% down from the last couple of years.

I highlight below some current searches for a few of the top tier investment banks in London:

Tax Director - International Planning
£80,000 - £120,000 + bonus
See More Details

International Tax Manager - UK Bank
£55,000 - £80,000 + bonus
See More Details

International VAT Managers - Top Tier Bank
£60,000 - £80,000 + bonus
See More Details

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

It's early January 2008, and typically a time of year when a number of new tax opportunities emerge in the market. Below are a couple of interesting ones that I have picked up:

Senior International Tax Manager (maternity cover) - FTSE 100 Group, London
£Flexible hourly rate
See more details


Transfer Pricing Manager - Large Bank, London
£50,000 - £80,000
See more details


I suspect that the demand for transfer pricing specialists will continue during 2008 as it does seem to be a major issue for both Heads of Tax and finance execs within business to get their heads around.

What makes a top flight Group Tax Director?

By Simon Godley

The latest issue of Tax Careers magazine (December 2007) features a profile of Joel Walters, Group Tax Director of Vodafone. It's an interesting article as it interviews Joel, and outlines how he got to where he is now ie Global Head of Tax for one of the world's largest and highest profile companies.

What is mostly interesting, and the theme that underpins the article, is that he has not micro-managed his career through setting of targets and goals each year etc, rather when he has seen opportunities in front of him, he has seized them. For example, in 1986, he decided to shift across to a tax role in an accountancy firm from a law firm, and then shortly after move to a firm in Washington DC, just when the last major re-write of tax law was being released. He focused and mastered these new rules, and found ways of doing tax planning around them.

Later on in his career, he stepped out of tax a couple of times to work in two start-up companies. Here, he picked up very valuable commercial experience of getting a small business off the ground, and then translated and used this experience when he returned to tax. His quote being 'Great tax people are those who also have business experience. Just being a tax expert alone will not make you a great business partner within a business'.

I think there are two key drivers to be possibly learnt from this article - one is about taking risk, and the other is about how hard you work. Joel Walters has benefited in a very harmonious way from both areas - he has been prepared to take a risk in his career, and for this he has been rewarded. When he has then found himself in an interesting role, he has worked very hard at it, and as a result has got ahead of the game.

Some people take risks, and they don't work out, and so some may say that Joel has been lucky in his career. But I think, and I'm possibly quoting a famous successful person here, that the harder you work, the luckier you become.

Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

This week's featured tax jobs are both in the real estate sector. Despite concerns around a potential crash in the commercial property sector, the need for tax specialists in this area remains strong.

Real Estate VAT Manager, London £60,000 - £90,000 + Bens
See more details

Tax Manager, Commercial Property Group, London £50,000 - £80,000 + Bonus
See more details

Where will we (and tax) be in 50 years?

By Simon Godley

Reading through the paper this lunchtime, I had one of those 'What is happening to the world moments?'. This was mostly driven by the first article reporting a 19 year old boy in Nebraska who had been on a shooting rampage in a shopping mall, killing 8 people, and then shooting himself. Clearly this is the behaviour of a very disturbed person, however the comment that caused me to reflect the most was that his suicide note revealed that he 'just wanted to be famous'. Fame? I couldn't kill a fly without feeling tremendous guilt, but I can kind of see the logic here. The boy becomes obsessed with famous people, maybe he develops some sort of resentment and jealousy that they are famous, and the only way he can quickly have the perceived level of attention that you get when you are famous is to commit this atrocity. The fatal flaw in his plan - he never got chance to enjoy his very short lived 'fame'.

My thoughts then turned to the concept of fame. When did fame begin? My conclusion to this was when media started, when things were reported about people, when newspapers were written, and then fame possibly caught on a lot faster when people could go and see a moving picture - this is when you can really get to 'know' someone in terms of their looks and personality. Therefore, fame has evolved out of technology.

The next article was more revelations from HMRC and their breaches of security. The acting head of HMRC David Hartnett, being quizzed by the Treasury select committee, was putting the breaches down to 'systematic failure'. Sounds a bit like blaming technology to me.

Thirdly, how did the wife of the 'dead' man from the canoeing accident get exposed for potential fraud - someone had found a picture of him and her together in Panama, which had been posted on the internet, dated July 14 2006. His 'death' certificate is dated 21st March 2002. Once again, technology (ie the internet) playing a significant part in the process.

So the opening pages of today's newspaper reveal three articles where technology has played a significant role, two times in a very harmful way, and once in possibly a helpful way.

So what on earth has all this got to do with tax? Well, what about tax technology? Surely a good thing in the UK, for example, where tax and accounting rules become more and more complex. The idea of the tax compliance process being fully automated, with clever software that is coded into ERP systems, pulling out the relevant tax (and VAT) numbers and placing them in the correct fields of a tax computation. So where's the downside, is there one?

To digress slightly, I recently took a trip to France to buy some booze for Christmas, and decided to stay overnight in Boulogne. From the point of deciding to make this trip, the first time I actually spoke to another human being who was incidental to my trip was when I said bonjour to the receptionist of the hotel in Boulogne, after buying my booze. Everything I had to do up to that point, including buying a channel crossing and booking a hotel room was totally automated. So technology also removes chains of people, and hence removes jobs.

So I guess the big fear with tax technology is the impact on tax professionals' jobs. Going back to the troubles within HMRC, we have already seen 12,500 job cuts as a result of the Inland Revenue merging with HMC&E, and the plan is to cut another 12,000. This was highlighted recently in Taxation Magazine, with Mike Truman launching his 'Stop the Staff Cuts' campaign. As tax technology improves and becomes fully integrated into large PLC, are we going to see an evaporation of those working on tax compliance?

We have realised that we can't live without technology and computers, but hopefully we will realise that even though computers do clever things, and save us time, they have no common sense or imagination, something that only humans can possess.

Tax skills shortage - what can be done?

Thoughts of the day - Simon Godley

I keep seeing examples of very well known, high profile and blue chip UK companies (or international companies in the UK) really struggling to recruit UK and/or international tax professionals. It can now take 6 months or more from inception of a role to having a candidate accept an offer. Then in most cases they will serve a 3 month notice period, and so it can take 9-12 months (or longer) to have a tax professional start in a specific role which has been vacant. When a Head of Tax is advised that this could be the timescale to recruit, they will seem highly concerned - in a 12 month period, the outlook or landscape of a business could have completely changed.

As I have discussed in previous articles, this is due to a combination of an acute shortage of fully trained tax professionals in the UK, coupled with a lack of appetite from tax professionals in the UK to move jobs. That's the candidate effect, but there is also the client effect ie when it comes to considering candidates from different backgrounds for a role, just how flexible will a company be? In my experience, not very, which can be fair enough, because in-house tax functions want to recruit in experience which is very targeted for a particular role, thereby not needing to spend time training them after they have joined.

But I think the UK market, and particularly companies, are possibly missing something here. When I look through my candidate database, I have a sizable number of qualified and potentially highly skilled tax candidates from overseas - popular places of origin are India, Australia, South Africa, and Eastern Europe. These candidates are not usually included for first interview because they either lack or have no UK tax experience. But if they were included for first interview, and they held a highly skilled migrant visa to work in the UK (which quite a lot do), and there wasn't a major language barrier (and there rarely is), and the company was prepared to allow them some time to retrain into the UK tax system, then companies may have someone up-to-speed and trained in a role quicker than if they hold out for a UK tax candidate.

The employer will also benefit from the salary that they will have to offer ie lower than an equivalent UK tax professional, and at the same time an attractive salary level from the candidate's perspective.

I'm not at all saying that recruiting candidates from overseas is not without some major pitfalls, for example, physically relocating the person and their family. But I feel that there is more scope for UK/international candidate arbitration than is currently practised.

Views on this warmly welcome.

Back into tax after a career break

By Simon Godley 29 October 2007

I have recently worked with two tax candidates, both looking to get back into the tax market following rather lengthy career breaks. One had decided to move on from a Tax Manager role with a major London bank, and take a cultural sabbatical to Latin America, lasting 3 years. The other person had been offered an attractive pay-off from a professional firm in late 2001, and decided to pursue various academic interests, amounting to a 5 year career break.
Both candidates found good quality tax positions within a matter of months. Both had to take a step back in level, but my feeling is that within a one to two year time frame, they will both be back up to a level where they left off before their career breaks.

Time Out of Tax
The longer you take out of the tax market, the higher the risk of not being able to get back in. Tax is an area which is constantly changing, and so the landscape can look very different if you haven’t been around for, say, 3 years. If however you decide to go off travelling for 6-12 months, and cannot arrange unpaid leave with your employer, then getting back into a new job on your return shouldn’t take too long, depending on the underlying demand in the market on your return. This latter point is key - if you had decided to go trekking in the Himalayas for 12 months at the point when Enron collapsed, you may have found a few more ‘closed doors’ on your return. In fact given the current nervousness in the financial markets, now may not be the ideal time to take a (short) career break.

Practice vs Industry
Depending on your role and tax experience before the career break, you may be looking at a route back into a tax team within the professional firms, or into an in-house tax role. If your previous experience has been largely corporate tax within industry, then you will undoubtedly find least resistance to finding a role back in industry. If however you have grown up within a Big Four corporate tax team, for example, then you could look at roles within both practice and industry. If you have taken a long career break (18 months or more) then instantly stepping back into a professional firm could be more difficult, as there is more of an emphasis on being technically up to date and conversing fluently with clients on complex tax matters. Industry can be less concerned about technical know-how, with the emphasis being on practical tax accounting skills, and to be able to communicate and connect well with senior finance and business heads in the group. Things like interpersonal skills and commercial maturity will hopefully not wear off, and indeed may improve, through taking a career break.

Getting back in – some tips
• Closely review new roles appearing on tax job sites and the tax press, for example etaxjobs.com, taxcareersonline.co.uk and taxation-jobs.co.uk and respond to those that closely match your prior technical experience
• Apply for interim roles e.g. 3-6 months tax contracts in industry, requiring your prior technical experience. This will get you back up to speed with some of the tax rules, and could possibly lead into a permanent role
• Use your network – contact ex-bosses and colleagues to see if they can point you to a route back in. They may have heard of roles in the market, and your ex-boss my offer you a job again, should you be happy going back to the same employer
• Keep in close contact with recruiters – if there is now a gap on the CV because of a career break, then making it onto a shortlist for a role will be more difficult. You need to be regularly picking up the phone to them, keeping on their radar for when new roles/contracts come up
• Do some technical reading to find out which areas of tax have mostly changed in the time you have been away. This will not help to get you interviews, but ultimately will show in the interview that you are making efforts to get back to speed

'No job cuts' from BDO/Chiltern deal

Source: Kevin Reed, Accountancy Age

BDO's acquisition of Chiltern will see no job cuts, and will push on both firms' ambitous targets in the tax market.

'No job cuts' will follow Chiltern's acquisition by BDO Stoy Hayward, BDO's head of national tax, Paul Eagland, told Accountancy Age.

As BDO presented its deal of its latest acquisition Chiltern, which houses 75 partners plus support staff, Eagland said the combination was made to accelerate BDO's ambitious growth plans and enhance market position.

'Wider knowledge gives us a better platform to grow,' said Eagland.

Both firms had expected double-digit growth over the next financial year, which Eagland siad will be enhanced through the acquisition rather than just maintained.

'The impact on the market will be significant,' said Eagland.

He said partners of both firms had agreed to the deal 'unanimously'.

SG comment: It is quite surprising that BDO have made this sort of public announcement so soon into this deal. It is very good news for the new firm if this is maintained, and clearly shows the synergy involved with the deal. I think it also reflects how difficult it is for firms like BDO to recruit in the current tax market, and clearly they have now satisfied their need to hire new tax people through acquiring Chiltern, which had become a pure tax consultancy.

In-House Tax Movers - October 2007

Peugeot Citroen UK has recently hired Phil Ward as their UK Tax Manager, being the No.1 tax role with the UK group. Phil joins from InBev, the beverage group that owns Stella Artois, where he was Head of UK Tax. Phil originally trained in tax with PwC in the mid-late 90s before moving into industry in 1999.

Laing O’Rourke, the UK’s largest privately owned construction company has recently appointed Bernard Tucker to bring tax in house for the first time. Bernard joins with a wealth of commercial tax experience, having led the tax function for Inmarsat Plc for the last 6 years.

Global engineering and construction group Black & Veatch has recently hired Frederich During as their new European Tax Manager, based in the UK. Frederich has joined from NSK Europe, the bearings manufacturing group, where he was European Tax & VAT Manager. Frederich originally trained with Deloitte & Touche.


If you have recently made a move within the in-house tax market, or know someone who has, feel free to pass through the details to simon@inhousetax.co.uk for announcement on this blog.

Credit Crunch - Impact on in-house tax jobs?

I am now hearing from a few independant sources of recruitment freezes affecting the large corporations and global banks in London that are looking to recuit. This is all quite worrying, and it would seem that this time the banks are not being slow off the mark to bring down the recruitment shutters. Although I guess this time the potential financial crises is happening in their back yard, rather than being sparked by an Enron or dot-com crash, and so they should know when to stop hiring.

Bob Reynolds, editor of Tax Careers, comments in their latest issue that recruiters are in somewhat of self-denial about what may happen to jobs in financial institutions, and that their attitude seems to be stay calm, your jobs are safe, everything will be OK. Bob responds with 'The banks will make some cuts and then, if the global economy improves, attempt to recruit again'. I would tend to agree with Bob on that.

If this potential crises does end up hitting us all hard, then in terms of in-house tax jobs, I suspect that it will be the major top tier banks and corporate giants that will need to cut in some areas, but generally in-house tax teams tend to stay fairly resilient in down turns. Tax teams within second tier banks and most other FTSE companies should stay at roughly the same size through a turbulent time. Some stand-alone tax roles may be at risk, but I think it will depend on their particular corporate sector.

The current nervousness in the market could all blow over in the next few months, and us recruiters will be smiling again, but I sense that the next couple of years could be a bit more difficult.

Tax Compliance (in-house).........in a different location?

Over the last 2-5 years, some of the large groups (mostly UK PLC) have relocated their tax compliance team to a different location in the UK. Typically with a HQ tax function based in London, they have moved the CT compliance function to somewhere like, eg Bristol or Sussex.

I have spoken recently with a couple of tax contacts in industry, and I am not entirely sure of the rationale here, maybe I am missing something?

Looking at the cost side, which is always the main driver, there will be theoretically a lower cost (ie lower salary) if you have someone based in Bristol rather than London. However, the supply of skilled candidates in that location is vastly reduced, companies often find that they can't recruit someone within the budget, the budget gets stretched, and they have to offer a salary that is closer to London levels anyway. Whilst the role is vacant, they have the option of hiring a temp/contract tax person, but the cost of the this will be higher (due to premium hourly/daily rates for temps) than a full time person in London. There is also the not insignigicant recruitment fees for hiring the people in the new location, partly because they will struggle to get people to relocate in the same role.

Clearly the other main cost is the rent/lease of the space needed for the team. I don't have details of corporate rents, but it may be a significant cost reduction to have 4 tax accountants sitting in Swindon rather than London, I'm not sure. This could be where the answer lies.

The other issue is communication, which has much more of an intangible value. The question is whether a tax compliance person will pick up more relevant information, and therefore do a better job, if they are sat with the other group tax members, compared to being sat in a far off remote location. My feeling is that they would pick up relevant information quicker if they are sat with group tax in London.

The caveat to all this is that I am not a Head of Tax trying to stick to a tight budget, and no doubt I am missing several other issues on this subject.

Any comments / debate on this very welcome.

Tax technology gathers pace.........by Simon Godley

As IT innovation keeps developing, we find that computer technology becomes a more integral part of the tax process. In fact, it seems that companies are gradually adjusting to having most of the tax compliance process highly automated, with bespoke ERP systems collecting the relevant tax numbers from financial accounts, and throwing them into a tax return. For large multinationals with complex business operations, the use of tax systems can remove large chunks of man-hours from the year-end compliance work. This effect is also now feeding into the VAT / indirect tax arena, where a small number of tech-savvy VAT specialists are developing products to automate the VAT process for large business.

Whilst in the long run this could be bad news for tax accountants as their work load decreases, Talentpool is currently finding an increasing demand for tax professionals to actually switch into the area of tax technology.

The current tax technology market is broadly serviced by 2 types of organisation. There are teams in the Big 4 firms that advise multinationals on their tax technology requirements. Then we have the software houses that design, develop and market tax software products. There is now a large array of products to choose from for each area of tax, including specialist areas such as property taxes and transfer pricing. Some of the Big 4 firms have also developed their own tax software products, which they market to clients, and hence compete against the software houses.

I think it is only a matter of time before industry, particularly amongst the large top end FTSE 100 type companies, also bring in-house this tax technology know-how and expertise.

In-House Tax Movers - July 2007

Niche professional services group Jefferson Wells has recently recruited John Gearing as a senior hire within their London tax practice. John joins with a wealth of experience from the banking sector, having spent a successful 15 year period as Head of Tax in London for DKW, the investment bank

Commercial property specialist Derwent London Plc has recently appointed a new Group Tax Manager Trevor Ling. Trevor joins the group after a 5 year period as Tax Manager with Luminar, the leisure / nightclubs owner where he had gained extensive exposure to UK property sector tax issues.

Global insurance and reinsurance group XL Capital has recruited Sandra Carrillo Hernandez into the London based tax department, and who will lead the tax work for the German operations. Sandra takes up the appointment after a career break, and previously was International Tax Manager with Morgan Stanley in London