[Teddybear91]

I’ve been working at my firm as a tax accountant for almost a year now – we’re a 22 person CPA firm that deals mostly with high net-worth individuals, family-owned businesses, trusts, estates, etc. I actually do like working on individuals, doing tax returns and tax planning but somehow I can’t imagine my future at this firm or anywhere else in public accounting. The grueling busy season hours have really put a strain on me and to not get paid for all the extra work we’re doing seems so unfair but I guess that is the nature of this industry. I’m struggling to figure out what my next move should be; I really want to work somewhere where I can see myself progressing like 3-5-7-10 years down the line, where I can go from entry-level to senior to management. I feel like at my firm even if I work here for five years I won’t be a manager because there is someone already above me in our 5 person tax department, so I know for a fact he will make senior/manager before I do. So then whats the point of staying here? Isn’t it better to go off and work somewhere else?

I really just want a more flexible tax job and with decent benefits and less stress. I plan on having a family soon and I want to be one of those women who has a career but also life outside of work that doesn’t include working on the weekends with no overtime pay. I’ve been looking into tax examiner openings at my state DOR office but I’m not really familiar with the job or what it would be like working in public service. Are the hours as bad as public accounting? Are there opportunities for growth? Any advice anyone?

[Anonymous]

I interviewed for a tax auditor job at my DOR, which ended up not being funded, but they said there was only occasional overtime and that if you did have to work over it was treated as comp time, so if you worked 45 hours one week you could work 35 the next. You still got paid overtime for the overtime hours, but could take off time the next week (at straight time), so really you'd end up getting paid extra but working the same hours. And…if I remember right, it was 37.5 hours/wk not 40, so really it would've been something liek if you worked 42.5 hours/wk you could work 32.5 the next week to make it even out, but examples are easier with a 40 hour base week. 😉

I'm sure this varies from DOR to DOR, though, so not saying it's the same for all of them. They did also say there's some travel. The territory that the office I interviewed with usually covered was within about an hour's drive of the main office, but they said there's usually 1 or 2 trips a year that require 1 or 2 overnights out of town (usually for training at the state capitol, which is far enough away from where I live to require an overnight if the training is more than 1 day). By contrast, I have a friend who works at the CA DOR and I know that she's done more traveling with her job – I'm in KY and she'd asked me a few months ago what I was doing one week, cause she was going to be a couple hours away, traveling for her job. She's one who likes to travel, though, so I think that she chooses a lot of the travel assignments, and I'm sure there's people in her office who travel less; however, she probably spends at least a week every quarter out of town, if not more.

Personally I worked for a year in tax and decided it wasn't for me. The long hours during tax season were too much for too long for my tastes. I switched to private accounting and far prefer it. Month-end closing in some industry jobs can have similar hours for 3-5 days a month, but I do much better with long hours for 3 days in a row every month than for 3 months in a row once a year. 😐 Now I'm working at an NFP that doesn't have a bad month-end closing, but their fiscal year-end and audit cycle is pretty rough, so I have a 2-3 month period that's longer hours than I anticipated or desired…but it's still better than tax. 🙂 I think that how good or bad private accounting is varies from one job to another but there's at least room for it to be decent, whereas tax there's just bad and worse. 😐

[Nessie]

Why not work for yourself? Start your own business?

REG Aug 20/15: 88
AUD: Feb 29/16: 80
FAR: Jun 10/16: 80
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[Teddybear91]

Thank you for your responses. I can't start my own business because I don't have my CPA yet. Lilla, can you tell me more about the role of a tax examiner? What is the day to day work like?

[Anonymous]

@Teddybear Since the position ended up being cut from the budget right after the interviews were conducted, I haven't actually worked as a tax examiner, so don't know first-hand what the day-to-day is like. From what they said, though, it sounds like some days would involve going to meet with a taxpayer to audit their records and review for compliance, and other days would involve reviewing records from the office. At least at the office I interviewed with, they stressed that their goal with an audit is, yes, to find people who are committing fraud, but also to help educate taxpayers about the tax code. Most incorrect tax returns are due to errors, not fraud, so in their eyes, a successful audit is one that you can audit the same taxpayer 5 years down the road and find none of the same errors. So, I think at least in that office, on-site visits would be a day of review followed by a brief period of teaching to pass on information about how things should have been done to help the taxpayer avoid issues in the future.

A lot of the day-to-day work would be boring work, adding up a column of numbers to see if it matches to the total provided, etc. I think that's true of any form of auditing, at least until you get to higher-level management positions. However, again at least with the office I interviewed with, it sounds like most of the time each examiner is given their own projects, so you're seeing it through start-to-finish. You might be doing the boring work papers, but you're also doing the analysis work at the end, so it makes it much more interesting overall.

I think I would have enjoyed the job, had it been funded and had it been offered to me. It wasn't, but it sounded very intriguing. 🙂

[Teddybear91]

Hi Lilla thank you again for your response, could you tell me more about your NFP job as an accountant? I'm also interested in the NFP sector and I'd like to know more about your day to day.

[Anonymous]

The NFP I work at has a very small accounting department, so my day-to-day varies a lot and includes a bit of everything accounting related. Our staff has been cut down substantially during my short time (less than 18 months) at this organization, so now our accounting staff consists of:
1 AP person
1 AR person (we're a college, so student accounts is our AR and is a full-time thing – not just sending out invoices like in a standard setting, since it's dealing with students and parents in-person etc.)
1 CFO (who also is over many other non-accounting areas so does the budgeting and most of the financial planning, but not much in the way of hands-on JL entries etc. accounting work)
1 General assistant (probably closest title would be “Accounting Clerk”) who covers AR about 1/3 of the time, covers for other non-accounting offices about 1/4 of the time, and the remainder of the time helps out where needed with AP, AR, or accounting duties
1 Controller (me)

So, basically, if it's not AR, AP, or budgeting, I do it. That's not 100% true, but it's mostly true. And I do AR and AP things, too, and help out with some budgeting stuff. As you can imagine with a staff that small, if anyone is out (sick, vacation, etc.), everyone has to pitch in to help cover their duties, so when the AP person's on vacation, I do AP for a week; when the AR person's on vacation, I do a lot of AR; etc.

When we're fully staffed, I do bank recs, investigate weird issues on the GL and correct them, generally do a lot of researching things to find answers for people, maintain and analyze our investment accounts, review and update policies and procedures, constantly try to find ways to streamline and improve our processes (both for better audit compliance and for improved efficiency – with staffing cuts, we've had to get more efficient or die trying!), generate reports for the board of trustees, work with our IT department to automate processes, etc. There's days that it's just “counting beans” all day, and there's days that it's fixing issues all day. The CFO and I are the only ones in the department with any accounting degrees (CFO has MBA; I have CPA; others may have 1 or 2 accounting classes, but have otherwise learned on the job), so I think my duties involve more Q&A and teaching of accounting principles than would be normal in such a position, but I like that.

Overall, due to how small our staff is, I'd say my job includes all the “true Controller duties” you'd expect – preparing financial statements, working with the external auditors, etc. – as well as standard Accountant or Bookkeeper duties. Our ERP system does a lot of things automatically, but almost any accounting record that isn't AP, AR, or automatic through the ERP is generated by me.

The biggest drawback of my job is that I took it with the understanding that it was an 8-4:30 workday with occasional overtime. Since our staff has been reduced so much, and since I'm salaried, that means that I'm now working quite a bit more than that in a good week, and we won't talk about a bad week. 😛 Stereotypical NFP accounting jobs are a light schedule, no more than 40 hours a week on a regular basis. This one doesn't fit that mold, but there are jobs out there that do.

This post was mostly typed right before bed, and then finished while getting ready for work, so hopefully it halfway makes sense. 😐

[Anonymous]

You sound just like me except I work at a 300 person firm and already have a 5 year old and a second on the way. I'm eager to hear what others have to say. Tax examiner doesn't sound to appealing to me as I'm not sure the pay would be great. I working in the same area as you and I have a hard time imaging how to use what I know and am good at to land a job doing something else. It seems like such a narrow niche. Aside from going into business for myself, finding a few Ultra High net Worth clients to be sort of the assistance/family office/finance person, I don't have many ideas.

[Teddybear91]

I'm really just frustrated with doing returns and planning for rich people who complain when they have like 500 bucks due, while I'm sitting here collecting pennies and working 12 hour days. I like the people I work with and there are days when I am happy that im here and overall im happy to be employed. I thought maybe a tax examiner job with the state would be better for me because its fewer hours, better benefits, a public pension and in ten years id have my student loan debt forgiven so theres alot to think about. Im also looking into the nonprofit sector but like you said its hard coming from tax, we have a very narrow skill set it seems. I do like tax but I'm frustrated with public accounting (I mean
seriously no overtime pay? its total slavery). I really am at a loss for what to do; I just feel like if i stay at this firm even 5 years it wont matter. Im never going to be a manager here and why would I even want to be? This job has too much stress for my taste.

I don't know what's right for me. My other issue I haven't passed any parts of the CPA exam either – I failed audit twice, FAR once, and now I'm just sick of it. I thought about getting my EA instead but I dont know if its a good idea. Help please?

[Anonymous]

Tax is somewhat niche, but it can also be applied elsewhere. The shorter a time you've been there, the easier it is to translate and move the experience to something else. My experience prior to getting my NFP job was a year at a small tax/payroll/bookkeeping firm, and a year working in A/R for an international company (my title was “Accounting Clerk” 😐 ). I refer to my year in public as a year in tax, though I did do bookkeeping and payroll/payroll taxes too, so I know it was a bit more varied than people who do just taxes all day. But…for you tax people, what do you do through the summer? Isn't there some non-tax stuff at some point during the year? Or it is either tax-planning or tax-prep all year? Since my only experience was in a micro-firm that did bookkeeping in the off-season, I'm not very familiar with the pure tax world. 😐 However, I was able to sell my experience to get the A/R job, and then the combination of the two to get my current NFP job.

I think the key to moving out of tax would be a) to be willing to enter a non-tax job at a fairly entry-level position, recognizing that not a lot will transfer over, and b) figuring out how to sell what you do know. If you do corporate taxes, you work with the corporate accounting to some extent. If you've only done individual taxes, but it's been high net-worth, you've probably seen some business stuff through their K-1's, etc. Figure out what you've seen that would apply outside of taxes and how to sell it. Then be willing to take an entry-level position, where the knowledge you have is a bonus, and then your knowledge gives you a leg up over the competition. For Teddybear, you said you've been in taxes for 1 year, so you're still on the early end of your career I presume, so entry-level end of things shouldn't be a concern for you. For Cuzzourt, if you're more established in taxes, maybe entry-level would be more concerning, so you might want to take a different route to leave the industry, but I think for someone who is early in their career and looking to leave, taking a fairly entry-level position in another facet of accounting would be the easiest way to do it.

As far as the EA or CPA – I'd only get the EA if you want to continue doing taxes. It's not a designation that's really recognized outside of taxes. So, if you want to move to private or NFP or something like that, I don't think there's really much purpose to getting an EA. The CPA isn't really needed till you're further along in your career, though, so maybe you'd be best advised to take a little break, figure out what direction you want to go with your career, and then re-attempt it. It can be nice to do while the materials are fresh from schooling, but you don't really need the CPA (outside of public at least) till you're moving up on your career, so I'd say for now, if you're sick of it, maybe take a break for a bit, focus on your next step in your career, and then after you're settled in to the next step, then attempt the CPA again, or maybe you'll have decided at that point that the CMA is better, or have gone a different direction entirely and do the CFE (Certified Fraud Examiner) or CIA (Certified Internal Auditor) or something like that. CPA is all I've done, so I'm way outside my league discussing the others – just throwing out acronyms to try to sound smart haha. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Teddybear, you're doing what I WANT to do! Where is your firm? My problem is two fold –

1) I live in a very small town and due to family obligations (husband, kid, parents in assisted care), I cant move
2) I'm coming in to this almost 50 years old after working in another industry for over 15 years.

I'm willing to take entry level with my goal of either buying into a partnership or starting my own firm eventually. I cant even get people to talk to me for informational get togethers. 🙁

[Author]

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