[Anonymous]

What exactly is the career progression of someone that starts out at tax with the Big 4 if they decide to exit to industry? With audit you eventually go c-suite if you play your cards right but what about tax?

[Anonymous]

I'm not from big4 and I'd love to hear what they have to say, but I can speak based off my experience from working for a local cpa firm.

My work is almost exactly 50% accounting and 50% tax so I feel like I have more than enough knowledge to move to industry and work in their accounting department and work on both financials and tax returns. You may not get the same accounting exposure in big4 since the financials will be spotless when it goes to you for tax prep. In my case, many of my clients have no idea what their doing so I find myself reconciling everything and making a lot of adjustments at year end.

[See Pee A]

From what I understand, tax exit opportunities are much more specialized. The skills learned in tax are very valuable, research, details, etc., but are tough to transfer in the same way audit experience is more easily transferable into industry accounting, general management, and even finance. Tax people definitely have fantastic opportunities being the in-house advisors for all kinds of firms, but the best ones are within tax. Tax is a great area, but many areas (i.e. federal, SALT) offer limited opportunities in less directly related positions. Fantastic career though if you like it and are good at it. There really aren't many people who stick with this stuff!

BEC 86 (08/30/11)
FAR 84 (10/13/11)
REG 88 (11/08/11)
AUD 86 (11/29/11)

Exam prep - Becker self-study

[Author]

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