Tom Birley comments on working in tax as a sole practitioner. ‘I FIRST became interested in tax at an early stage in my new career in 1993 as a trainee chartered accountant with what was then Coopers & Lybrand.
It seemed to me straight away that tax was a much more creative and intellectually fulfilling discipline than audit and within a year I had contrived a transfer to the tax department which soon became a permanent posting.
To start with, the work mainly involved the preparation of company and personal returns and computations and although that was satisfying enough in its own right and afforded me plenty of client contact from an early stage, it was obvious right from the outset that there was much more interesting, demanding and challenging work to be had further up the food chain.
Later on, I expanded my horizons by spending three years working in trust tax at Abacus Financial Services Ltd, where I qualified as a chartered tax adviser in addition to the chartered accountancy qualification I had already gained at Coopers & Lybrand and in 2000 I returned to by then PricewaterhouseCoopers to manage the tax department there.
I finally took the plunge and established my own practice at the beginning of 2004. Setting up and running my own business has been a fascinating and mind-broadening challenge in its own right, but that isn’t really within the scope of this article.
The three aspects that I find most rewarding about a career in tax can be summarised as follows:
You never stop learning
Tax law evolves and you always need to be abreast of the latest technical developments. You can be absolutely certain that sooner rather than later someone will ask you for advice about them - and even if they don’t, you are provided with frequent opportunities for taking the initiative with creative planning ideas, or at the very least damage limitation exercises.
You can provide real added value
On the whole you go to a lawyer or an accountant because you need one and while the service they provide is entirely necessary, the cost of it is generally seen as something you have to put up with. A tax adviser, on the other hand, can often find himself in a situation in which the advice he provides can generate tax savings amounting to many times the cost of his fees - and that is immensely satisfying.
There is constant variety
Virtually everybody pays tax at some point in their lives, and that means that the range of potential clients out there is enormous. As a tax adviser you develop a real insight into your clients’ personal business and financial circumstances which I find endlessly fascinating and rewarding.
In conclusion, if you are looking for a professional career that provides intellectual challenge, constant variety and endless opportunities to meet interesting people, I can thoroughly recommend setting out on the road to qualification as a chartered tax
adviser.
* For more information on Tax Advice Week, go to www.tax.org.uk.
Article posted on 19th October, 2007 - 12.00am
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