PROTAGION
  • Proteges
    • Now What?
    • Career Support Guide
    • Career Goals >
      • Promotion / Raise
      • New Skills
      • Further Qualifications
      • Moving Countries
      • Switching: Consult/Contract/Startup
      • Transition: Specialism/Profession
      • Managing a Business
      • Portfolio Career
      • Purpose & Meaning
      • CPD
      • (Conference 1-5 Mar '21)
    • Example Professions >
      • Accounting
      • Actuarial
      • Asset & Investment Management
      • Risk Management
      • And more... >
        • Talent Management for Professionals
    • Our Services
    • Courses
  • Mentors
    • Encore Mentor
    • Featured Subset >
      • Anne - Australia
      • Boniswa - S Africa
      • Bradley - UK
      • Cherise - Nigeria
      • Hafsa - S Africa
      • Lee - Hong Kong
      • Lusani - S Africa
      • Margaret - S Africa
      • Michael - S Africa
      • Natasha - UK
      • Nikki - UK
      • Sumit - India
      • Trevor - UK
      • And More on our Protege Platform...
  • Subscribe
  • Platform Login
    • Login
    • Sign Up: Free
  • Stories
    • Our Stories & Articles
    • Our Principles
    • Books
We help professionals achieve their career goals
OUR STORIES
Over 150 career-related articles and counting... Scroll down to read
NEED MORE CAREER SUPPORT? Our professional mentors & coaches are here to help
Join our in-a-group facilitated sessions & explore your career questions with us​
SUBSCRIBE TO JOIN OUR
IN-A-GROUP SESSIONS

Careers in Tax

6/9/2021

1 Comment

 
One of our professional mentors, Hafsa Daware, is an expert in tax as well as a Chartered Accountant. Earlier this year, she wrote an article on careers in the Tax Profession for the IntegriTAX section of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants’ (SAICA) Accountancy SA magazine. She describes her profession as “lucrative, inspiring, challenging and versatile”, writing that she has “always had a passion for tax, and value[s] the breadth and depth of what I have been able to learn over the years from all the disciplines that I have been privileged to work with”. Such cross-functional collaboration is fundamental as “understanding a business from all angles is critical to effectively advise and guide it from a tax point of view”.
​Hafsa is a mentor on the Protagion platform. To experience what we offer our proteges or arrange a mentoring session with her, signup as a protege:
SIGN UP NOW
Picture
​Read more for Hafsa’s thoughts on the skills required of tax professionals, the wider understanding of commercial aspects you can build through working on tax matters, the areas and roles tax professionals can work in, and some lessons from the business and tax authority perspectives.
Skills
Hafsa writes that “generally, becoming a tax practitioner or tax professional requires that you have excellent time management skills, communicate well with people, be meticulous with detail, and be able to understand and interpret the tax legislation.”

A lot of specialist knowledge is naturally important. While Hafsa’s original article explored the South African routes to becoming a tax professional, the avenues of degrees (such as Honours, Masters or Higher Diplomas) or other courses, perhaps after obtaining accounting or legal professional qualifications, conceptually apply more broadly and internationally too. Nevertheless, local professional or regulatory requirements are highly relevant.

Hafsa also explains some of the other skills tax professionals can build in addition to tax technical skills, specifically referring to understanding:
  • the legal construct of transactions, 
  • business strategies, 
  • risk management processes, 
  • mergers & acquisitions, 
  • debt structures, and 
  • investments.

​The wide exposure to different aspects is why Hafsa argues that tax professionals can also choose to step into careers in other lines of work over time i.e. “it opens the door to possibilities far beyond the specialism”.
Contributions of & roles in the tax profession
Internationally, Hafsa explains, the tax profession is evolving to play an ever increasing and critical role in business, as well as in Revenue Authorities. “In business, the profession makes a contribution on many fronts, from ensuring compliance to tax legislation, tax risk management, tax advisory and tax planning to name some of the significant areas. The profession also makes a significant contribution to governments in the form of tax auditors, administrators, legal and tax policy design to ensure that the country’s tax base is protected.”

The profession offers various styles of work too, including self-employment, or employment by:
  • Revenue Authorities 
  • Corporates for their own tax affairs 
  • Accounting firms consulting to others 
  • Legal firms offering tax services 
  • Universities: lecturing and/or research work 
  • Firms offering software to perform certain tax services 
“The opportunities are therefore endless,” says Hafsa.
Tax professionals in business
Being a tax professional in business or public or private practice offers you a window “to see into every aspect of a business, given that some form of tax may stem from the majority of the transactions that a business would enter into. On the tax advisory side, it is common that tax professionals work very closely with various teams, for instance, corporate finance, legal, actuarial, accounting and operational teams. In a corporate, this is entirely necessary to ensure that the appropriate tax treatment is applied to transactions of the business. This typically allows for the holistic understanding of transactions on an end-to-end basis as well as gaining insight into the business rationale in respect of transactions… Tax is a crucial part of a transaction and must be implemented correctly.”

Taxes can include corporation tax, value-added tax / sales tax, employee taxes, customer taxes (such as policyholder taxes, or reporting information for customers to include in their personal tax returns), transactions taxes (like securities transfer tax) and more. “Tax compliance is a significant part of the profession, as ultimately, everything being done by a business culminates in the submission of a tax return to the relevant Revenue Authority for each type of tax, and taxes payable. This side of the profession is underrated, however [it] is one that is critical to all businesses to enable compliance with laws and regulations. [It] is also critical to Revenue Authorities, as it is any government’s source of income… with funding going towards areas such as education, health services, infrastructure, unemployment support and protection services...” Overall, taxes play a key role in the operation of society.
Hafsa's full original article "Choosing a Career in the Tax Profession" appeared in the August 2021 edition of  Accountancy South Africa (Accountancy SA). She is a member of the SAICA National Tax Committee. 
1 Comment
Mohummed
7/9/2021 13:44:19

Great article Hafsa

[This is a repost of a comment on Hafsa's LinkedIn share of her full article]

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.


    Follow @Protagion

    Author

    Bradley Shearer
    ​Founder of Protagion
    My Personal Journey
    I'd love to hear your stories

    SHARE YOUR
    STORY WITH ME

    Categories

    All
    Active Career Management
    Branching Out
    Connection
    Consulting
    Contracting
    Future Of Work
    Inspiration
    Leadership
    Learning
    Mentoring
    Non Executive Directors (NEDs)
    Personal Journeys
    Professions
    Psychology
    Real Life Examples
    Role Options
    Routes To The Top

    Tweets by protagion

    Archives

    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017

    RSS Feed

"NOW WHAT?" - a common question our visitors ask...
​WE CAN HELP!
Examples of common career goals, with resources for each: promotion, new skills, further study/qualifications, moving countries, switching into consulting / contracting / startup, transition to new specialism or profession, managing a business, portfolio career, purpose & meaning, CPD, and more... 


Follow @Protagion
Home / Proteges
> ​Services
> Subscribe
> CPD
​​

​Mentors

Our Stories / Blog

Sign Up to use our System
​
​
Privacy Policy​
Career Development and Talent Management for professionals: accountants, actuaries, analysts, asset managers, bankers, CFAs, data scientists, engineers, investment managers, risk managers, and more...
Protagion currently offers services in English, although some of our mentors & coaches speak other languages too. ​Please email us if you have any questions.
Picture

​© 2017-2024 PROTAGION LIMITED (10721032) is a company registered in England and Wales.
Registered Address: 128 City Road, London, United Kingdom, EC1V 2NX
Photos from Pjposullivan1, paul.horsefield, flazingo_photos, wuestenigel (CC BY 2.0), SURF&ROCK (Miguel Navaza), symphony of love, timo_w2s, ksunderman, Pjposullivan1, www.ilkkajukarainen.fi, Official U.S. Navy Imagery, Pjposullivan1, Kuruman, Pricenfees, Tennis-Bargains.com, wuestenigel
  • Proteges
    • Now What?
    • Career Support Guide
    • Career Goals >
      • Promotion / Raise
      • New Skills
      • Further Qualifications
      • Moving Countries
      • Switching: Consult/Contract/Startup
      • Transition: Specialism/Profession
      • Managing a Business
      • Portfolio Career
      • Purpose & Meaning
      • CPD
      • (Conference 1-5 Mar '21)
    • Example Professions >
      • Accounting
      • Actuarial
      • Asset & Investment Management
      • Risk Management
      • And more... >
        • Talent Management for Professionals
    • Our Services
    • Courses
  • Mentors
    • Encore Mentor
    • Featured Subset >
      • Anne - Australia
      • Boniswa - S Africa
      • Bradley - UK
      • Cherise - Nigeria
      • Hafsa - S Africa
      • Lee - Hong Kong
      • Lusani - S Africa
      • Margaret - S Africa
      • Michael - S Africa
      • Natasha - UK
      • Nikki - UK
      • Sumit - India
      • Trevor - UK
      • And More on our Protege Platform...
  • Subscribe
  • Platform Login
    • Login
    • Sign Up: Free
  • Stories
    • Our Stories & Articles
    • Our Principles
    • Books