Wealthy Direct Tax Specialist

Location

Portsmouth

About the job

Job summary

Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what its really like to work at HMRC.

HMRC is the UKs tax, payments, and customs authority. We have a vital purpose, and we collect the money that pays for public services and help families and individuals with targeted financial support.

Part of Wealthy & Mid-sized Business Compliance (WMBC), its our job to ensure that wealthy individuals pay the right amount of tax at the right time by providing appropriate support to get things right as well as tackling non-compliance when it arises.

The definition of wealthy is an individual with £200,000 of annual income and/or £2 million of assets (e.g. property and investments).

Wealthy individuals often have complex tax affairs that present significant challenges to an effective tax administration. Given the size and nature of the tax at risk within the wealthy population, there is increased opportunity for, and risk of, non-compliance.

For our most complex customers we adopt a co-operative compliance approach where there is a more intensive and enduring relationship with the individual and their agents.

Customer Compliance Managers lead our approach to compliance for our highest risk customers, using their tax professional knowledge to identify and address complex risks across tax regimes. They build effective working relationships with customers and their agents, as well as take the lead in conducting investigations and providing direction to colleagues on investigation cases. As a Direct Tax Specialist, you will be dealing with some of the most high profile and complex personal tax matters that present themselves within the UK tax system.

Job description

a Customer Compliance Manager (CCM), you will continuously lead the Departments approach to compliance activity in respect of an allocation of wealthy customers.

You will develop a deep understanding of the tax affairs of your customer base, utilising your tax professional knowledge to identify risks. You will use a range of tools and techniques to promote good compliance and prevent / respond to non-compliance. Building effective working relationships with your customers and their agents will be key.

The tax affairs of the wealthy are often complex and involve structures and transactions that cut-across multiple jurisdictions. You will need to have a good understanding of Capital Gains Tax and Income Tax legislation, including anti-avoidance provisions. You will regularly be addressing customers and agents verbally and in writing on complex tax technical matters, continuously putting your knowledge into practice.

You will work closely with colleagues at various grades to conduct compliance activity for both your allocated customers and others in the Wealthy population. You will provide clear leadership to those that you work with, setting the strategy for activity and provide effective oversight of the work carried out. You will also be leading a number of your own investigations into suspected non-compliance.

Wealthy teams work closely with each other to ensure a consistent level of high-quality customer service is provided to the population. There will be an expectation that you take an active role in the wider activities of Wealthy, such as one of the portfolio networks and/or as a team single point of contact for a subject area.

You will be encouraged to explore opportunities for upstream compliance and take a lead on developing projects that seek to close the Wealthy tax gap.

Collaboration with colleagues both within and outside Wealthy is key to ensuring we close the Wealthy tax gap. You will need to be comfortable working at pace with technical specialists, policy owners and legal professionals. The team has built successful working partnerships with colleagues across Customer Compliance Group including Risk & Intelligence Service and Fraud Investigation Service. You will have a key role to play in maintaining and developing these partnerships.

This role does not include any direct line management.

Person specification

Build and maintain effective working relationships with your allocated customers and their agents to help promote good compliance as well as tackle suspected non-compliance.

Regularly review the tax affairs of your customers, including leadership and delivery of an annual risk assessment.

Develop a high level of tax technical knowledge across key Personal Tax regimes and apply this knowledge to identify and tackle compliance risk.

Accurately, clearly, and confidently convey HMRCs position, verbally and in writing, on tax technical matters.

Develop and utilise investigation skills to a high standard to progress compliance interventions, including exchange of information requests and information powers, ensuring decisions can be defended on legal challenge.

Conduct investigations efficiently, legally, and proportionately in line with HMRCs Compliance Professional Standards and ensure all decisions are taken in line with guidance / governance protocols.

Prepare, to a high standard, submissions to technical specialists, policy owners and solicitors on contentious issues.

Take responsibility and accountability for decisions that are made in respect of your customers and your portfolio of work.

Develop yourself and others to ensure Wealthy are in the strongest possible position to tackle non-compliance amongst the wealthy population.

Work collaboratively with compliance colleagues to ensure effective identification of tax risks and progression of investigations at pace.

Essential Criteria

You must be a qualified tax professional holding one of the following qualifications:

• For previous or existing HMRC employees TSP or predecessor qualification (TPDP, IDP, ITS2, CPT FT2) - (note - existing HMRC employees would only be eligible if they have completed the appropriate course to get them to G7 level (or above) in a tax professional role.)
• Chartered Tax Adviser (ATII/CTA) (Direct Tax route) CIOT
• AIIT (including Paper 4*) or a Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies membership qualification e.g., Institute of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales (ICAEW), Institute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland (ICAS) Institute of Chartered Accountants Ireland (ICAI)
• Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA)
• Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)
• Post Graduate full legal qualification - in taxation matters
• HMRC staff holding one or more of the listed essential professional qualifications are entitled to apply regardless of their current grade within HMRC and would be applying as an external candidate.

Qualifications

For previous or existing HMRC employees TSP or predecessor qualification (TPDP, IDP, ITS2, CPT FT2) - (note - existing HMRC employees would only be eligible if they have completed the appropriate course to get them to G7 level (or above) in a tax professional role.)
Chartered Tax Adviser (ATII/CTA) (Direct Tax route) CIOT
AIIT (including Paper 4*) or a Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies membership qualification e.g., Institute of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales (ICAEW), Institute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland (ICAS) Institute of Chartered Accountants Ireland (ICAI)
Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA)
Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)
Post Graduate full legal qualification - in taxation matters
HMRC staff holding one or more of the listed essential professional qualifications are entitled to apply regardless of their current grade within HMRC and would be applying as an external candidate.

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