Direct Tax Manager

Manager - Direct Tax Compliance and Reporting

The company

EY Global Delivery Services (GDS) is the hub of innovation, a technology powerhouse, a global talent center and, a driver of operational excellence within EY, propelling EY’s purpose of building a better working world.  With a robust network spread across 9 countries and 20 cities, GDS’s dynamic network of highly talented professionals leverage data, AI, and cutting-edge technology to enhance EY's wide array of services in assurance, consulting, tax, strategy, and transactions.

Join us at EY GDS Hungary to shape your future with confidence.

The team

The Global Compliance and Reporting (GCR) team is part of EY’s EMEIA Tax Center (ETC). The ETC is unique to EY: we are the only Big 4 professional services firm with a dedicated center of excellence focused on delivering exceptional client service across borders. Our 570+ talented ETC professionals are based in 21 countries across Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA), and work with clients across the area, regardless of our location or theirs. We provide specialist tax, business and technology expertise to address clients’ most pressing challenges in an exciting, dynamic tax and business environment, through a broad range of innovative service offerings. 

The GCR team comprises over 225 dynamic individuals spread across 13 countries and more than 20 offices.  We have specialist tax and finance skill sets spanning the areas of Direct Tax Compliance and Reporting, Service Management, Indirect Tax, Statutory Reporting, Finance BPO, Funds Tax Management, and Payroll. We focus on supporting our clients in managing their compliance and reporting requirements, centrally and locally, and delivering on their transformation agendas. We are a team which embraces diversity and inclusion with a mix of cultures, nationalities and backgrounds. We believe this makes us perfectly suited to the global environment in which we work.

Our Direct Tax Compliance and Reporting team work closely with the client group tax function, acting as the primary point of contact and developing trusted business relationships across the account. We provide clients with global tax insights from their direct tax data across countries, major legislative and business changes which need to be planned for and tax opportunities which could deliver value. Our unique position enables the team to build a wide network across EY service lines and countries as they bring together all of the EY services and expertise available to meet their client needs. Our team work exclusively on large, multi-country compliance engagements, providing the opportunity to work with some of EY’s most complex corporate clients and giving a continued opportunity to learn and develop.

The opportunity

Join our fast-growing Direct Tax Compliance and Reporting team, situated within the Global Compliance and Reporting (GCR) service line, as a manager. The role will give you the opportunity to work on EY’s largest multi-country client engagements in a tax accounting and direct tax capacity. This role will help you understand the global engagement metrics where you can contribute to the continuous process improvement plans and interact with global client management. The opportunity is for a manager who has prior technical knowledge:

• Direct tax compliance management for multi-national companies, including strong technical foundation in at least one country’s direct tax laws, compliance filings and tax audit management. Identifying tax saving opportunities and risks from the compliance data, and driving compliance process improvement areas to attain efficiencies and value.  
• US GAAP and / or IFRS tax reporting to provide compliance.  You will work closely with London based ETC teams or other teams in different GDS locations in assisting clients in their quarterly and annual tax reporting process and have the opportunity to grow a tax accounting advisory book of business
• Balance Sheet reconciliations where you will review monthly/ quarterly reconciliations for our largest TFO engagements and have the opportunity to work in the automation and transformation of the service

Your key responsibilities

• Support the Global Process Owner (GPO) with managing the clients direct tax compliance and tax audit and controversy across multiple countries:
  • Oversight of the direct tax deliverables under the global outsourcing compliance engagement.
  • Support in overseeing the overall compliance process/engagement.
  • Managing the team and global client deliverables, central review of Direct Tax Global View Packs, presenting Global Data Analytics to the client where we will be sharing insights from client’s direct tax data across countries, helping the client manage major legislative changes which need to be planned for and tax opportunities which could deliver value. 
  • Support the GPO to identify tax saving opportunities, risks, process improvements to deliver value beyond compliance to the client and to drive margin efficiency for the team.
  • Being the central point of contact for cross-country technical escalations, and ensuring the client receives a standardised and quality delivery across the board.
  • Help the client identify tax audit trends, learnings and mitigation strategies.
  • Inform local teams with client business understanding to support strategic tax audits, and to share known defence strategies that work from other client’s jurisdictions.
  • Oversee the maintenance of the EY global tax audit tracking tool, and use the data in this tool to extrapolate the above noted insights.
  • Support from time to time with user acceptance testing and tool development ideas for the EY global tax audit and controversy management tool and the corporate tax insights tool.
• Managing the delivery and execution of tax accounting, account reconciliation and data analytics deliverables.
• Review simplified centralised prepared provisions and return to provision accruals, review more complex provisions and return to provision accruals from EY local teams
• Leading cross border delivery team.
• Key client contact, communicating with clients and building strong relationships.
• Managing account resourcing, budget and delivery
• Implement new engagements and seek process improvement opportunities on engagements
• Helping drive efficiencies on client’s or EY’s processes, designing and implementing simple solutions to complex processes, leveraging benefits of standardisation, centralisation and technology
• Connecting our clients to EY subject matter specialists
• Maintaining quality standards
• Developing and coaching the team
• Escalation for client and EY teams
• Liaising with our Centre of Excellence teams in London, Belfast, Philippines, Argentina and Poland and EY Local country teams
• Management of engagement document libraries and readiness for tax quality review
• Support with requests for proposal from time to time

You will be supporting across both our Direct Tax compliance and Tax Reporting delivery teams, being a route of escalation for members of the team if they cannot move issues forward. You will be expected to build strong relationships based upon trust and doing the right thing with our clients. You will ensure our teams are using our best practise documentation, and that agreed procedures and processes are adhered to on your engagements. You will also make sure our suite of technology tools is providing the output required to meet our contractual obligations. 

Your day will be structured around internal client catch ups, conference calls and teams meetings – managing the key activities you, and your team will be working on that week / month, the contractual obligations we need to meet, and what needs to be prepared for upcoming client meetings. You will review and sign off the client deliverables and ensure that these meet the right quality standards.

As a Manager at EY you will actively be involved in the coaching and development of more junior members of your team and providing career guidance for the wider team where required. You will be responsible for leading our teams and making sure we all working as well as we possibly can together.

Skills and attributes for success

• Broad and deep corporate tax compliance experience, including tax audit management. Specialising in at least one country’s tax framework.
• Business tax advisory experience, being able to identify tax opportunities and risks from global compliance data and discussions with client and EY country teams
• Experience on working and managing large global outsourcing compliance engagements
• Project management skills, with the ability to plan and prioritize work, meet deadlines and monitor own budget.
• Self-motivated and takes personal responsibility and accountability of their own work
• Problem solving capabilities– identifies an issue, evaluates, designs a solution and implements, and ongoing commitment of continuous improvements
• Process focused with experience of implementing process or technology changes
• Track record of managing teams; coaching and developing junior staff
• Strong communication skills and experience working with multi-country teams
• Organized with an ability to deliver deliverables in a short timeframe
• Ability to manage budgets and time to deliver a quality output 
• Experience in US GAAP and / or IFRS tax accounting provisions/projects, Global View Packs and Balance Sheet Reconciliation
• Corporate income tax experience (any country or countries)
• An ability to distil complex concepts into simple high-level messages
• Accounting qualification (would be an added advantage)

Qualifications and experience

• Degree qualified
• 5+ years of experience in corporate tax and withholding tax 
• Experience working in corporate tax compliance, in professional services or industry (combination of professional and industry experience preferred, not essential)
• Understanding of the tax reporting process, Balance sheet reconciliation process and understanding of Direct Tax Compliance Review
• Good understanding of the deferred tax concepts
• Project management experience on managing/leading large global outsourcing compliance engagements
• Track record of managing teams

Additional skills and attributes for success

• Excellent communication skills – both written and verbally
• Proficient multi-tasking ability
• Be a strong team player with the ability to add value to the current team
• Experience managing teams across multiple jurisdictions
• Excellent MS Excel and word capability
• Result driven candidate with the capability to add financial value to an engagement
• Broad experience in withholding tax, country by country notifications and other direct taxes
• Experience of rollout and/or implementation of tax technology is plus
• Tax Transformation/compliance process improvement experience is plus
• Accounting qualification and/or Tax qualification (ACA/CA/ACCA/CTA) is plus

What we offer

By seamlessly integrating with EY member firm teams across the global, GDS contributes significantly to EY's purposeful and sustainable growth, delivering insights and solutions that foster trust in capital markets and create value for EY clients, society, and the planet.

We strive to achieve the right balance for our people, enabling to deliver excellent results while allowing everyone to build your career without sacrificing personal priorities, providing:

• A competitive salary and benefits package, including private health insurance.
• Opportunities for professional development and career growth, by access to training and development programs, coaching and mentoring as well as on-the job opportunities.
• A supportive and collaborative work environment with multicultural teams.
• Flexible working hours and hybrid work with 2 days in the office per week.
• Employee wellness programs and initiatives and the opportunity to obtain the All You Can Move sport pass.
• Possibility to volunteer for meaningful initiatives to positively impact lives in the community.

GDS is All in to shape the future with confidence, addressing today's challenges, and anticipating tomorrow's needs. EY GDS is not just reimagining the future of work - it's actively building it, ensuring agility, efficiency, and resilience in an ever-evolving world.