Many of you have shared with us this tax season was a challenging one for many tax firms due to lack of tax staff with three to five years of experience to support Tax Managers, Tax Directors, and Tax Partners. This has been a challenge for firms for a few years now, so what is the solution? There are a few solutions that are currently being adopted by firms nationally and internationally. This post discusses the solutions for firms’ short term and long term. The primary solutions are offshoring the work, onboarding new staff and outsourcing the work to other firms, and under private contract utilizing TaxConnections Executive Search services.

Services provided in offshoring tax work to India started in the 1980s and rapidly accelerated in the ’90s. In today’s world where information technology has become critical to business, the meaning of outsourcing has undergone a drastic change over the years. CPA and accounting firms significantly reduce costs by outsourcing tax compliance services to India. Labor costs in India are much lower than in the United States, with firms saving up to 60% of costs. It means that firms can save a significant amount of money by outsourcing tax services to India. We have encountered many Tax Managers who have been on rotation to offices between the U.S. and India to train the staff on tax preparation. The Big Four firms in India have grown to massive size to outsource client engagements for U.S. multinational clients at competitive costs. The one drawback to this is there has been less emphasis on training tax staff in the U.S.

We have noticed accounting firms and corporations increasing their hiring at the tax intern and staff level. This is good news as they are also making a commitment to train and educate a new generation of needed tax staff by corporate tax departments and public accounting firms. If these organizations offer tax staff a supportive environment to learn and grow, this is good news for a tax staff entering the tax profession. If you do not have enough tax staff, the growing trend is training and growing your own. You build technically stronger Tax Managers when you provide them with the opportunity to grow by transferring their technical knowledge and tax skills to others. We expect to see this trend continue to grow throughout the tax profession. It is a win-win solution for tax organizations.

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