Assistant Manager – Alternatives Funds, Tax

Introduction 

The KPMG Alternatives team provides high-quality and impactful tax advisory and compliance services to the Alternative Investment Fund sector. This includes private equity, hedge funds, credit funds and real estate funds.

Due to our ongoing growth, we have a number of job openings for exceptional candidates. This posting is for a role focussed on Alternative Funds tax and would be well suited to a driven and motivated candidate with experience in the Alternative Investment Funds sector, or someone with a keen interest in developing this as a specialism. We are also hiring for other roles across the Alternatives tax team – see separate postings.

Key responsibilities

As an Assistant Manager, your responsibilities will include:

• Preparing tax advice on a wide range of UK and international tax matters relevant to the Alternative Funds sector, including UK corporation tax and partnership tax matters. This will require undertaking detailed technical research of legislation, case law and HMRC manuals. If you don’t have a background in Alternative Investment Funds, we will support you in learning about the sector and applying your existing UK corporation tax and partnership tax knowledge.
• Reviewing corporation tax and partnership tax returns that have been prepared by team members, identifying any errors or changes, and getting them ready for final review and sign-out.
• Attending client meetings and calls, including playing an active role in the discussion of tax technical topics.
• Interacting with HMRC, including by telephone and letter.
• Build long-term trusted client relationships with the clients that you are aligned to. This will include understanding the client’s business and pro-actively think about their needs, in order to identify other KPMG services that they may benefit from.
• Working collaboratively with other members of the Alternatives team in the UK, as well as with other KPMG offices globally. Adapting your style and approach when needed in order to achieve the best possible outcome.
• Supporting the team with business development initiatives, which may include researching potential clients, preparing flyers or other marketing material, and preparing for seminars and in-person events.

Relevant skills and experience for this role

The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate all of the following attributes:

• Qualified as a Chartered Accountant (CA or ACA), Chartered Tax Advisor or solicitor (or international equivalent).
• Career drive to develop a specialism in Alternative Funds taxation and to be part of a fast-growing, high-performing Alternatives tax team.
• Positive approach to personal development and motivation for progression to Manager grade and beyond, as your experience and knowledge develops.
• Track record of delivering high-quality corporate tax advisory and compliance services to clients. Experience in Alternative Investment Funds sector is preferred, but this is not essential.
• Ability to manage competing deadlines by planning ahead and prioritising, and communicating effectively with colleagues and clients, including when under pressure.
• Strong level of UK corporation tax knowledge and the ability to communicate complex rules and ideas in a simple way, both verbally and in writing.
• Delivers written work to a consistently high standard, with a strong attention to detail.

Why choose KPMG?

At KPMG you can be a part of something big and are welcome to

KPMG’s Major Projects Advisory (MPA) team works with some of the world’s most demanding organisations, helping to crack some of the biggest challenges in Infrastructure.

People Consulting Manager - Financial Services

Base Location: London CSQ plus network of 20 offices nationally:

www.kpmg88careers.co.uk/experienced-professional/#LeBlender.OfficeLocations

People Consulting Overview:

People Consulting is an integral part of KPMG’s Management Consultancy practice and a growing part of our business. This team help to transform the performance of organisations by changing the way people are led, managed, and developed. We do this by focusing on two key areas – delivering the people agenda on large scale, complex, change programmes and transforming the HR function by technology.

We have four key capabilities:

• HR Transformation
• Learning solutions
• Organisational Transformation
• Workforce Transformation

The Responsibilities/Job Description

This role involves working on a range of projects with a client base in the Financial Services sector. This primarily involves clients in the Banking, Insurance, Asset Management, Fintech and Commodity Trading sectors.

The work involves:

• Developing and maintaining client relationships
• Interviewing clients to understand activities and value drivers for our clients’ businesses
• Determining key industry features across varied industries that influence the pricing of transactions
• Benchmarking market prices across industries and transaction types
• Documenting and designing pricing policies
• Drafting transfer pricing reports
• Supporting clients with tax authority enquiries and Advance Pricing Agreements
• Involvement in global documentation projects where we prepare transfer pricing reports for clients across multiple jurisdictions
• Coordinating with KPMG’s transfer pricing, international tax, indirect tax and other teams across the business on a range of topics
• Coaching and developing junior members of staff
• Assisting with the team’s business development and marketing initiatives.

The Person

We are looking for candidates with the following skills/experience:

• Either a CTA, CA, ACA, ACCA qualification or attained a Bachelors or Masters degree in economics, finance, law, accounting or equivalent qualification.
• At least 3 years of transfer pricing experience, preferably including experience of preparing transfer pricing documentation, tax value chain analyses, benchmarking, supporting with tax authority enquiries/Advance Pricing Agreements, project management and managing junior team members
• Sound judgement, including the ability to identify and evaluate risk issues and know when to involve others.
• High level of analytical skills and a commercial approach to resolving issues and providing advice
• High level of drive and enthusiasm with a positive attitude
• Good commercial awareness and a desire to develop a technical specialism
• Ability and willingness to keep up to date technically
• An appreciation of and/or understanding of ethical/risk issues within a client service environment
• Strong people skills for engaging with our clients and team members
• Excellent communication and project management skills
• Experience of the Financial Services industry is highly desirable but not required

KPMG has one of the leading Indirect Tax practices in the UK. We work as a national practice providing advice and support in all aspects of Indirect Tax (VAT, Customs Duty, Green taxes) to a broad range of business sectors including large multi-nationals, household name retailers, public sector organisations and Financial services (banking, insurance, asset finance, asset management and real estate clients)

The Indirect Tax practice is a fast-growing and dynamic business, currently with approximately 20 partners and 200 professional staff located across the UK.  We work to support our portfolio of clients with a variety of Indirect tax issues.  Within the various teams we have specialists in sectors such as Retail, Supply Chain, International Trade, alongside our Public Sector and Financial services specialisms.  We work closely with our colleagues in Trade & Customs, Corporate and Employment tax to deliver value to KPMG’s clients.  

The role in question is with the Financial Services (FS) Indirect tax team. The FS Indirect Tax practice currently services a broad range of clients, providing both VAT and Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) services. As VAT and IPT are real time, transactional taxes we work closely with our clients, building up a deep knowledge of their activities and how their businesses operate.

The team undertakes both compliance and advisory services. Over the last 12 months the team has been successful in winning a number of new, exciting projects. These projects include working with some of the largest investment banks, insurers, asset managers and fintechs In the market, we continue to see strong demand from clients looking for indirect tax support.