Tax Standards Manager, Mazars, London

The National Tax team provides essential internal support role for the Mazars tax practice. A key aspect of this is ensuring that the work undertaken by the tax practice is of high technical quality and meets clients’ needs, as well as meeting Institute and other regulatory requirements.
Whilst other members of the National Tax team are involved in standards and risk management, this newly created role will be unique in focusing entirely on this area, reporting to the National Tax Director. The tax standards manager will be responsible for ensuring our policies and procedures are continually reviewed and updated as necessary to reflect best practice and reduce risk. The person will also have day to day responsibility for running our quality control programme to monitor that these have been adhered to by the practice. The role will also encompass involvement in wider standards issues that have a bearing on the tax practice (e.g. data protection) and operational issues, such as maximising efficiencies through the use of standardised processes or software and agreeing protocols for new working practices (e.g. paperless working).

Clients

The role is an internal role, so the clients are team members of Mazars. This includes not only the tax practice but involves liaising with a range of people in a wide range of roles across the firm, including the Quality & Risk Management team, IT, Business Transformation and People & Development.
Job Role

This is a high profile role within the firm. Key aspects of the role include (but are not limited to):

• Ensuring that the firm’s policies and procedures for tax are kept up to date in the Tax Compliance Manual, including devising new policy as necessary, whether in response to internal or external changes, or to improve risk management. Rolling out changes to ensure the tax practice is aware of them.
• Being a champion of quality, organising and taking part in tax quality control visits, providing help and advice to partner reviewers to ensure the process runs smoothly and consistently, including drafting reports and liaising with the moderator.
• Helping to devise and implement a new self-assessment process of quality control reviews.
• Being a key point of contact both for the tax practice with questions in relation to tax standards and risk management and for members of the Quality & Risk Management team.
• Being a key point of contact to discuss potential disclosures under DOTAS.
• Maintaining and improving our suite of tax templates and checklists, in order to improve efficiency and manage risk.

Person Specification

This is a wide ranging role which requires flexibility and proactivity, as well as good mixed tax technical knowledge. Good judgment and communication skills are also essential skills. The role also requires creativity and a common sense approach as it will involve creating new policies and procedures for the firm. The person will need to work closely with other members of the National Tax team, and be prepared to take part in a wide range of projects.

This is an important role within the National Tax team and we are looking for the following:

• CTA and/or ACA
• Experienced manager with good awareness of the OMB sector;
• Self-starter who can both identify areas where improvements are needed and take on projects and is committed to delivery;
• Excellent risk awareness and tax technical skills (preferably relevant to the OMB sector);
• Excellent judgment coupled with common sense approach;
• Excellent communication skills, both written and oral;
• Someone who wants to make a positive difference and is committed to quality;
• Thorough and orderly work style with meticulous attention to detail;
• Good team player;
• Technologically versatile in order to make best use of technology, such as our tax software packages, to improve our processes;
• Flexible and prepared to ‘pitch in’ to a variety of projects.

The role is a national one and will involve some travel around our offices.