I took a sales and use tax job after graduating college with a company I had interned at in the revenue department. Fast forward 3 years and I hopped around town 3 times at various sales and use tax jobs and here is my experience… I felt VERY pigeonholed and only recently moved myself to a different state to be with my boyfriend and I am starting at a public accounting firm as an experienced, but not quite senior, associate. The partner that interviewed me told me – you have a leg up on the competition because of your sales and use tax experience because we have a client that needs some sales and use tax help but we don’t really have those skills in our office. YAY!!
However, there are some advantages to sales and use tax that I enjoyed:
1. You MUST understand the business. My first role was a b2b software company, it was imperative that I understood the wholesale and retail relationships, how things were billed (was maintenance separately stated, what about the implementation services?)
2. You will work across functions for audit support and to understand the business
3. RESEARCH! I like doing research even though it can be very gray – this is why you need a good manager to help you decipher which way could be the right way and to help back you up on audits, just someone to bounce ideas/findings off of.
4. Lots of interaction with customers, AP, AR, etc. who have sales tax questions and you need to give your company’s exemption certificate to (if you’re a manufacturer) or you need to obtain customer exemption certificates for audit defense.
5. With returns normally due monthly, it moves pretty fast but depending on how you get your data and what you need to do the prepare the return, review time, then actually efiling with payment or mailing with a check, you can’t really take off the 2nd and 3rd week of the month.
Major disadvantages that I saw:
1. Pigeonholed, BIG TIME.
2. Sales and use tax functions aren’t usually valued in a corporate tax department and can be the first to go in recessions even though it isn’t a type of tax that goes away. Sure, you can put in an Avalara or Vertex software to help automate the returns but you need to manage that software
3. When you think of a corporate tax department, a tax manager might oversee the income tax reporting (provision), the income tax compliance (returns) and sales tax. But that sales tax piece is probably very small so if you want to move up, you need a broad tax experience. Only in VERY VERY VERY large organizations will there be a “sales tax managerâ€
4. Annual reports, business licenses, and property taxes usually go hand-in-hand with sales tax to make up the “Indirect Tax†bucket.
Ways to bring value to the organization:
A lot of it depends on the type of business/industry you’re in. There are a lot of opportunities to bring value in manufacturing because I would be surprised if you’re assessing use tax correctly, there may be instances where you’re paying sales tax on materials and equipment used in the manufacturing process (careful with the equipment though, and it really varies from state to state because a forklift that brings materials from a loading dock to the conveyor belt to begin manufacturing may not be 100% sales tax exempt if it doesn’t met a threshold).
A great way to prepared for audits is to have adequate customer records… if you’re a manufacturer that sells 90% to wholesalers and 10% to retailers, you better have the exemption certificates for the 90% so when an auditor comes knocking, you are prepared which can help keep your liability low.
Sorry, I rambled a lot but most sales and use tax knowledge will come from on the job.
.