New Linked In Tax Network - Tax Technology People

By Simon Godley

This is a brief announcement that I have set up a new Group on Linked In, specifically for people who work in the area of tax technology. This is a rather experimental project at the moment, and it will be interesting to see if generates a critical mass of people in the sector. It is primarily for tax technology / tax software execs based in the UK, although it is open to non-UK members. I discovered that there were already a couple of tax technology Groups on Linked In generated in the US, but as with the broader tax market, the Atlantic does seem to split the tax technology world into two distinct people populations.

I have had my profile on Linked In for c.2 years now, but don't feel that I have really maximised its networking potential and functionality, hence this initiative.

The purpose of the 'Tax Technology People' Group, is mostly for networking in the sector. I guess it enables tax technology specialists to see who else is in their market (if they are interested), and possibly even to generate contact / debate between people with a common career interest. I am slightly sceptical about the latter purpose, but we will see.

Only people who have their profile on Linked In can join the group, otherwise Linked In as an enterprise wouldn't benefit. So if you are on Linked In, and you work in the field of tax technology / software, please join. If you are not on Linked In, have a look at setting up an account, I think it's a good business networking site with a good level of privacy options built in.

And of course, I would welcome any thoughts or feedback on the Tax Technology People group.

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

MYOB software branding to disappear

Source: AccountancyAge.com

The publishing business that acquired accountancy software company MYOB earlier this year has announced that it is to phase out the brand.

Wolters Kluwer told Accountancy Age that by September almost all MYOB branding will be gone and by January 2009 it will be completely replaced by CCH, the company's software arm.

Cathy Wolfe, CEO of Wolters Kluwer, said: 'MYOB still exists in Australia and is best of breed there'.

WK confirmed that following the acquisition there were no redundancies in sales and that it is not planning any big cuts. 'We want to expand our strong position so there is plenty of work to go round' added Wolfe.

Wolters Kluwer's announced last week that it had launched CCH ProSystem, a hybrid of both CCH and MYOB technology.

Simon Crompton, head of CCH, said: 'The new software has opened up a complete and totally integrated suite, for strong, big, and entry level organisations'.

CCH ProSystem will be available on upgrade to all customers of both CCH and MYOB and fully implements both package models into its framework.


SG comment - I have featured this article as amongst the MYOB brands are well known tax software products PerTax (including new rewritten .NET version), SecTax (for share dealings) and TrusTax (for trusts and estates). I suspect they will keep these product names, and repackage them as CCH products.