For a while now, I’ve been interested in whether I can ‘latch on’ to in-house tax teams to support them as an external advisor.
In-house tax professionals tell me how busy they are and how little time they get to do any advisory work or ‘bigger picture’ work – and I know that my team and I could add a lot of value in the employment tax space.
Because of this, I wanted to know how we, as external advisors, can position ourselves to be the tax advisor of choice for these teams – the person they go to when they need help and the person they will ‘hear out’ when we present an opportunity to make improvements – saving tax or otherwise.
That’s where Stephen Hodgson, our guest for this episode, comes in.
He’s been on both sides of the fence and has worked in-house as the Indirect Tax Head for 7 years now. And the advice he shares is invaluable.
Click the play button above to listen or click on of the below links to go to the podcast player:
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Guest – Stephen Hodgson
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjhodgson/
Stephen heads up the indirect tax team at Entain, which oversees annual indirect taxes of £1.3 billion across 40 countries.
He’s ACA, CTA and ADIT qualified, with over 17 years’ experience, of which 7 is with Entain.
Prior to working for Entain, he worked or Delotte, having numerous secondments in that time, and also for PwC for a short stint.
Stephen is currently doing a dissertation of taxes on gambling to become a CTA fellow and is also a member of the Worshipful Company of Tax Advisors.
Me – Jack Bonehill
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackbonehill94/
Email: jack@thetaxprofessionalspodcast.com
Timings
- The indirect tax team that Stephen runs
- (9:00) The type of external advice that Stephen’s team in particular take
- (13:00) What do in-house tax teams want from external advisors
- (15:15) What level of responsiveness/communication is needed to keep in-house tax team happy
- (20:00) Whether, even as a large corporate, they would only consider Big 4 advisors?
- (23:00) The impact of cost when it comes to choosing and working with external tax advisors
- (25:30) The factor of industry knowledge and direct knowledge of the business
- (28:30) What Stephen means by practical advice (which is valued very much)
- (34:15) What a bad external advisor looks like? Bad traits/attributes
- (36:15) How to deal with giving advice the client won’t want to hear in a way that they value
- (40:30) Who interacts with external advisors – is it only the heads of tax?
- (43:00) How to build a relationship with an in-house tax team from scratch to have the opportunity to support them
- (51:00) What Stephen would do differently when working with in-house tax teams, if he were to go back to practice
- (54:30) How an external tax advisor can be the advisor that an in-house tax team wants to work with and value?
What does practical tax advice actually look like??
As you’ll hear Stephen talk about, being able to give practical tax advice is paramount – it makes you so much more valued and liked as a tax advisor (and let’s face it – we are not known outside of the profession for being liked).
To learn how to provide the type of advice that clients will love you for, take a look at the Tax Advice Masterclass.
The next one is in November this year. Would be great to see you or a colleague there.