Careers

What do you like about working in the Tax practice?

Fed Tax Manager

I personally like every day I come in, I don't know what I'm going to do that day. I don't know what client's going to call with a problem, where we have to help them solve it because they're calling us, and they don't know what to do. So it's kind of that I don't know what I'm going to work on today, but I'm sure it'll be interesting. Maybe I've done it before. Maybe I have to go and find out how to do it before I tell them how to do it. So that's from a day to day perspective, that's what keeps me engaged.

Economic Valuation Services Manager

Most of my work is consulting oriented, so I also tend to have about ten clients at any given time. And we're working on different types of projects with those clients, helping them to solve problems. I have a lot of clients at any one given time, so I'm always trying to juggle short term deadlines, medium term deadlines, long term deadlines, and I work on a lot of different client teams. Every project that I have is pretty much comprised of a different team of people, different partner, different staff people working with me. So that all contributes to a fairly fast paced environment. Our clients are pretty demanding, and so turn around times are often pretty quick.

State & Local Tax (SALT) Sr. Manager

For me, I actually enjoy the fast pace. I enjoy that I'm working on ten or 20 different clients that are calling me every day, each with a different topic or discussion. And a lot of times, in State and Local, when we're the main client contact, they call us with things outside our ... like a federal tax question, or EVS or something. So that even gives us an opportunity to learn something outside our own realm, and you know, it happens every day. So I enjoy the fast pace. I enjoy the changes every day.

Fed Tax Sr. Manager

I enjoy the working with the people in my group. And also, we got so many talented people firmwide, with different practices, we face all different kinds of problems, we never know what kind of issues the clients bring to us. But there's somebody within the firm who can help on that, that even some complex issues that we haven't seen before. But there's someone in the firm, like we have some expertise. And so the resources are available, and the people in the firm, those are things that keep me here ten years.

Economic Valuation Services Manager

We do a lot of international work, because a lot of the work that we do is centralized around international transactions. So our group, itself, is very international, which is one of the things I like about the people in our group. People have all sorts of different backgrounds.

State & Local Tax (SALT) Sr. Manager

I enjoy it, because it changes every day. You're not always doing the same thing. You get experience in different industries. You're not necessarily just working on financial services or healthcare, something like that. You're touching every different aspect and learning lots of different types of issues.

What skills are important to be successful in the Tax practice?

Economic Valuation Services Manager

I always think about the fact that we're sort of providing people with a good technical foundation, but also a host of other skills that they can use at KPMG and have a long term career here, or that they can leverage when they go somewhere else. They'd be able to leverage their technical knowledge, but also, just project management skills, communication skills, client skills. For someone who's coming into their first job, I think that's very appealing.

When interviewing staff people, I try and explain that the job requires both quantitative and qualitative skills. They need to be able to work with numbers and financial statements, but they also need to be able to write. And I always emphasize what a great group of people we have in EVS and how nice everyone is to work with. We have a lot of people with PhDs in our group, and they're really natural born teachers. And of course, I emphasize the work-life balance, because I think we definitely are able to take advantage of that.

I feel like I'm getting a lot of technical experience and gaining a lot of technical knowledge, and the learning curve is really steep. But I also feel like I'm gaining a lot of more generic skills that are transferable outside of transfer pricing itself, so things like project management, and client management, sales skills. All of those things are equally as important to me.

What types of clients do you work with?

Fed Tax Manager

By the nature of our business, I probably deal with people outside of the US at other KPMG member firms internationally more than I do with our, you know, US offices. So there's certainly a challenge with some time zone differences, with Asia, and Europe and whatnot. But you begin to develop relationships, and you know how different people work, and you really grow from there, and just tend to work with them, over time, more and more. Certainly our business is becoming more global, from our perspective, for our clients.

State & Local Tax (SALT) Sr. Manager

We have a wide variety, and every industry, you know, we'll cover everything. We might cover 30 clients in a time cycle.

Fed Tax Manager

We deal a lot with helping companies that are buying companies in different countries where they would have to immediately have international expatriates, or setting up global payrolls, or some of the policy HR consulting side. So that's what really keeps me interested.

Economic Valuation Services Manager

All sorts of different nationalities, and you'll hear all kinds of languages spoken in the hallway, which is always interesting. And of course, our clients are fairly international, too. I have a lot of Japanese clients, also. And it adds an extra dimension to your job. It's just an extra point of interest, I think.

How has working in Tax helped your career?

Fed Tax Manager

KPMG is a great place to build your career. Whenever I hear that, I think it should be turned on; it should be a great place for you to build your career. They give you all the tools. If you want to do something, it's there. Whether it's work-life balance, whether it's the technical training, whether it's rotating to our WNT Center. Everything is there. But the firm can't do it for you. So if you want to do something, it's there. It's not going to happen tomorrow. There could be transition for a current client or something. But if you make it known, if you raise your hand, it's probably going to happen; but it's only if you're going to take control of your career. So when I hear KPMG, a great place to work, I think it's a great place -- you can make it a great place to work if you want to. I think the skill set and the background is there. But I think it's still some ownership on the individual.

Fed Tax Manager

I think working at a Big Four firm makes you more marketable. So I think the marketplace values the training, the background, the being accountable for your time.

Fed Tax Sr. Manager

I think all the training, resources available. There's opportunity to switch from one practice to another. Like, when that person joins an Associate. That person can probably stay with one practice couple of years, and then maybe can move to another practice, get some more experience, or, we do have that kind of flexibility. We have different training and we have a lot of people. Different kind of people who specialize in different things. And you can get mentoring from those people if you want. So I think in that sense, really great place to be with Tax.

Economic Valuation Services Manager

I feel like there's a lot of opportunities to do different things. It's not always evident to me outside of EVS, where I might move next. But within EVS, there are constant challenges, so I don't feel like I have to look that far in order to see challenges ahead.

Fed Tax Manager

I think at a lot of the Big Four accounting firms, you can run as fast as you want. So if you want to dig in, the partner or manager are going to support you and give you more, and you'll move up quicker, and move through the ranks faster. It's really what you want to put in at firms like these.