Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

I think it is clear that industry now will be as flexible as possible for in-house tax execs regarding working hours and flexible / home working, within reason. Tax roles which are full time (5 days) with one day working from home are becoming easier to negotiate. The job I'm featuring this week is a VAT Manager role with a banking group, and I think worthy of a feature as the company will consider candidates on either a full time or 4 days per week basis.

VAT Manager - Banking Group
London £65,000 - £75,000 + Bonus + Bens
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Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

The theme for this week is very much in-house indirect tax roles. I am currently working on 3 VAT/Indirect Tax Manager positions with large group companies. These roles will be mostly focused on VAT, but some roles can include other taxes e.g. PAYE/employment taxes or very specialist areas such as stamp duty or landfill tax. Because of the specialist knowledge and experience involved, there is usually a scarcity of candidates with the right skills.

A couple of examples are:

Indirect Tax Manager - Thames Valley
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VAT / Indirect Tax Manager - Surrey
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Tax Jobs - Weekly Highlights

I have picked up recently a couple more in-house indirect tax/VAT roles, generally at the experienced Manager level, c.£60-70k. Whilst these are specialist roles, I get the feeling from Heads of Tax that the VAT/indirect tax position of a group can be as critical as the CT/direct tax side. This is particularly the case if the group is either loss making or not paying CT, in which case the majority of the creative tax planning has to come from the VAT/indirect work.

Indirect Tax & Transfer Pricing Manager - Home Counties
£60,000 - £65,000 + Car + Bonus
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European VAT Manager - Surrey
£60,000 - £70,000 + Bens
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Pre-Budget Report - Business / Corporation Taxes - Impact on Big Business

Putting my very rusty tax technical hat back on, I thought I would quickly review the main changes from Alistair Darling's pre-budget report that will affect businesses:

Capital Allowances - fire safety expenditure / biofuel plants / Plant & Machinery disposal to a non resident

Corporate Tax: disguised interest

Corporate Tax: foreign exchange matching rules

Holiday pay - NIC exemption to be withdrawn

Exemptions for Investment Managers

Landfill Tax

Leasing of Plant & Machinery

Life tax measures

Measuring Tax Losses

Tax simplification for UK/EU VAT rules, anti-avoidance legislation and corporate tax rules for related companies

Spreading of tax relief for pension contributions

Tax treatment of financial derivatives


Whilst I can try to get a grasp of what each of the above measures are trying to do, it is rather beyond me to be able to say whether businesses are better or worse off as a result of the proposed changes. Taking off my tax technical hat and putting on my slightly cynical political hat, I would imagine that the net result is that more business / corporate tax will be paid. Pensioners and second home-owners will benefit as a result of individuals tax changes, which could be nice for votes, but complex corporate tax rules may help to balance the books, whilst at the same time snatching a quite a lot more tax from private equity owners.

For more detailed analysis of the above proposals, you may want to look at:

www.ukbudget.com produced by Deloitte

Views from industry tax professionals on this most welcome