Predictions for 2012 in-house tax market

By Simon Godley

So here we are in the 2nd week back after the New Year, and Talentpool is trying to settle in to what will hopefully be a busy year in the tax search and recruiting market, following on from a productive 2011.

Clearly very difficult to predict how the year will roll out, but here are 5 expectations of what we may see or experience from the in-house tax market in the UK.

1. It will remain notoriously difficult to recruit good quality Tax Advisers / Accountants at the newly & recently qualified (ACA / CTA) level. This will be partly due to low volumes of newly qualifieds coming through to qualification due to lower graduate recruiting in the Big 4 / top tier accounting firms during 2009. Also it is at this point when quite a lot of tax qualifieds decide to leave the tax sector and go on to do something else with their ACA qualification.

2. A continued trend to recruit tax accountants that can display good skills and experience on tax accounting / reporting (this may sound obvious but it can still remain a challenge to find tax qualifieds from the practice firms that have a good grasp of tax reporting (under US Gaap or IFRS) in addition to the more mainstream tax computations experience).

3. Quite strong demand for interim tax managers and tax accountants, particularly during busy compliance and/or tax reporting periods due to group tax functions feeling generally under-resourced and finding it difficult to get the approval to hire into a perm role.

4. In the case of the large-end / top tier multinationals, there may be an increasing trend to bring in-house expertise on tax systems and for ERP-Tax projects. As this area becomes a key feature of the workings of a tax function (i.e. more mainstream), and not wishing to always outsource this work to the large consultancies, Heads of Tax may more frequently look to hire a 'tax technology' expert.

5. Depending on the events and repercussions in the Eurozone, which could be harmful to the UK recovery within business, there may remain a rather weak M&A tax arena due to lack of high value corporate transactions. Demand for M&A tax experts may therefore be lower, however we would still expect to see moderate demand for in-house Tax Managers with good international tax experience due to large number of FTSEs and UK based groups being less reliant on UK business.

Will look forward to reporting on prediction vs reality observed towards the end of the year.