[William H Bonnie]

I left public after 3.5 years as a 2nd year Senior on the audit side of a mid-size firm with good ties to a Big 4. I spent the last year at a Fortune 500. For personal reasons, I was thinking of transitioning to the tax-side. I can ask a handful of the partners at my old firm to pass my resume along to the Big 4 they have a relationship with, always good to keep your bridges in tact, but was wondering what the impact of such a transition would be. Does anybody have any similar experiences? I would hate to start over as a Staff I with all the recent grads, but will do so to learn it properly. I had very limited exposure to the tax-side, but could probably pick it up a bit quicker than the average grad. Any thoughts?

[Mel]

I am interested in the answers as well because i am interested in the tax side but I do not work in public accounting nor do i want to become an auditor.

My questions to add are: How did you get into tax? Do you think it's possible to get into tax without being an auditor or having started in public firm?

[Anonymous]

My experience is all in small-town, small-firms…but I would say if you want to get into tax, take every opportunity to *do* tax…from doing your own return, to doing them for friends and/or family, or volunteering to do them for low-income families. It will show you're truly interested in the profession and will give you a bit of experience to reference when you are in interviews. If I had actually done mine and my boyfriend's taxes with something other than TurboTax, I'm pretty sure I would've been offered a job last year that I was passed up for because I had no experience whatsoever. So, after that, I've tried to tell people to take any experience they can! Something volunteering would be more “official” to put on a resume etc than just doing it for friends and family, but other way would work fine.

If you decide to do them and need to get your own software, our office uses Drake and I really like it…and it's fairly cheap if you're just doing a few returns. (15 returns for $285; $19 for each additional return. A single return includes federal, multiple states, cities, anything else included – the returns are counted per taxpayer social security number, so even a MFJ return counts as 1 return, even though it's for 2 people.) If I get out of public accounting, I plan to ge the 15-returns Drake and do returns for anyone I can just to keep up on things.

[Ntw6817]

Not to hijack your thread but if someone has the opposite switch, from tax to audit, I would be interested in hearing about that as well.

[Author]

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