Senior Tax Analyst

Job Description

- Prepare, review, and file multi-jurisdictional sales/use, business and occupation, and gross receipts tax returns for monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual filings
- Manages assignments for pre-cycle & off-cycle work: customer outreach for common issues (frequency; credentials); bulk account administration; special projects; filing calendar change management
- Manage assignments for critical Prepayment administration (if necessary)
- Serve as trusted resource for critical troubleshooting & questions needed to reduce risk in-cycle
- Ability to research and resolve jurisdictional notices on behalf of customers
- Communicate regularly and effectively with customers, jurisdictions and other internal teams as part of research and resolution
- Expert knowledge of jurisdictions website & taxpayer experience when manually imputing filing information (data input nuances; limitations)
- Reviews statutory bulletins for proactive change management monitoring and other critical news
- Serves as trusted resource if/when at Statutory Readiness & Review project is conducted (attend meetings; provide context)
- Maintains relationships with Avalara Government Relationship team & key jurisdiction resources (where appropriate)
- Perform QA related to sales and use tax content and form changes
- Identify ways to improve process and/or technology to better serve our customers.
- Work collaboratively with all staff members and management
- Effectively coordinate, lead, and facilitate meetings, action items and follow-up with cross-functional teams and subject matter experts surrounding jurisdictional changes and internal managed incidents that impact the returns operations business.
- Strategically partner with cross-functional teams, including Global Compliance, Government Relations, Product, Engineering, Content, Finance, and Sales to drive project execution, foster understanding and collaboration.
- Disperse project summaries and updates to large distribution groups via email and wiki.
- Attend weekly legislative monitoring meetings and disseminate comprehensive notes to the full group.
- Some travel may be required

Key Competencies

Communication and Documentation:

- Communicate regularly and effectively with various internal teams as part of research and resolution.
- Confidently manage state partnerships and be able to lead, conduct and contribute to live meetings with jurisdictions as a representative of Avalara.
- Display advanced coordination skills, effectively supporting team members across different projects.
- Disperse project summaries and updates via email, wiki and newsletter using proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. All communication should be clear, concise, and accurate.
- Communication should be adapted and tailored to suit various stakeholders and evolving circumstances

Facilitation:

- Regularly interact with senior management and leaders across the organization to facilitate discussions and decision-making surrounding laws and regulations that impact the organization.
- As a meeting facilitator, you will prepare an agenda, manage the discussion and ensure it does not deviate from its primary objective, provide real time feedback to stakeholders to clarify points.
- After the discussion, you will prepare detailed reports that restate the problem statement, the outcome of the discussion, proposed solutions, participant feedback, potential challenges, and action items.

Relationship Building:

- Cultivate a broad network of relationships with internal and external stakeholders whose support is needed to carry out initiatives
- Build productive working relationships with state, county, and city authorities to maximize the quality of our product

Qualifications

- Experience working directly with the United States State or private Tax Departments to:
- Serve as Power of Attorney on behalf of taxpayers
- Review and resolve jurisdictional notices on behalf of taxpayers
- Review analysis of independently conducted research of a taxpayers indirect sales tax filings
- Advocate as a tax technical stakeholder for solutions that improve a taxpayers ability to file returns at scale, timely and accurately
- Experience attending United States Sales Tax conferences and tradeshows
- 2-3 years experience working during United States business hours
- Transactional Tax Expertise, with emphasis around transactional tax complexities from a jurisdiction administration standpoint including:
- Standard reporting requirements across states
- Notice generating activities
- Red Flags for Audits
- Communication strategies
- Employment history working with a Big 4 Accounting Firm or large corporate tax department of a multinational company
- Excellent written and verbal interpersonal communication skills, with demonstrated success building relationships with United States Tax Department stakeholders (Collections, Customer Support, Audit, Legal)
- Minimum of 8 years of related experience with a bachelor's degree; or minimum 6 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with minimum 3 years experience; or equivalent experience

Preferred Skills

- Expert understanding of an Avalara customer's data flow
- Deep understanding of user platform features related to jurisdiction (nexus; exemptions; marketplace; rules; filing calendars; reporting; transactions)
- Reviews internal product enhancement requests related to jurisdiction (forms, automation, user interface, platform functions) & collaborates with Product Management team when help needed to define requirements
- Basic overall knowledge and understanding of transaction flow across the business and subsequent impacts to returns preparation and filing (advanced knowledge is a plus)
- Content
- Transaction Tax Calculation
- Transaction Data Flow
- Returns Mapping
- Returns Filing Automation

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