How do I know if a tax career is for me?
In evaluating a potential career path it’s certainly not something to be taken lightly. Although there are many factors involved in making the final choice of where you’re going to work, and generally speaking it’s even expected than professionals will make one or more job changes during their career, it’s still always wise go into a career or a company with as much conscious purpose as possible. After all, unless you have or anticipate an option to become a partner in the company, you know that the company is going to use you as long as they need you and not one day longer, right? So you should be realistic about what you expect to get for your talents and several irreplaceable years of your life.
First of all, you’re of course going to look at the salary potential. In matters relating to tax you can expect, sooner rather than later, above average salary for the simple reason that people who have money are willing to pay the people who help them protect that money from ‘the tax man’.
It’s true that most accounting firms who do tax accounting and auditing, especially the larger firms, will have lots of somewhat boring and menial work at the bottom levels of their organization. Depending on the ultimate prize and what you bring to the company in terms of talent, you may have to ‘start at the bottom’. But you can rest assured that if you do have talent it will be recognized.
If you’re not good at detail work then tax accounting, auditing, consulting is probably not for you. On the other hand, if you’re the kind of person who likes dealing in understanding complex problems and working out creative solutions …then tax accounting is probably something you’d enjoy. Tax evasion is wrong but tax avoidance is indeed….noble.
Everything….absolutely everything…that goes on within a company can be expressed in terms of ‘dollars and cents’ or British Pounds or Euros or whatever currency you might happen to be dealing with. That means that as you gain experience in evaluating the tax consequences of what companies and individuals do, you also get to know those companies and those individuals in a very objective way.
Outsiders often have the erroneous notion that tax work leaves little or no room for creativity but actually that’s far from true. The fact is that one of the biggest reasons rich people have money is because they keep up-to-date on tax laws and issues and they’re always looking for the most advantageous interpretation of those laws. Knowledge is power…..and money.
Tax professionals, once they’ve earned their spurs, enjoy very privileged positions at the table of power. If that’s the kind of thing you enjoy, you’ll enjoy a career in tax.