TTPP105: How to Be The External Tax Advisor In-House Tax Teams Want with Stephen Hodgson

In this episode, learn what in-house tax teams value and want from external tax advisors, so you can be their advisor of choice, with our guest Stephen Hodgson, in-house Head of Indirect Tax at Entain. There’s some excellent advice from Stephen too re how to break bad news to a client in a good way and re what practical tax advice actually is.

Show notes: thetaxprofessionalspodcast.com/TTPP105

Tax Advice Masterclass (next one Nov 24): https://www.thetaxprofessionalspodcast.com/masterclasses/ 

Subscribe: thetaxprofessionalspodcast.com/subscribe

Take control of your career progression free course: https://documents.thetaxprofessionalspodcast.com/freecourse

You’ll Learn

• 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?

Resources

Previous episode with Stephen: TTPP53: Moving from Practice to In-House (Industry) with Stephen Hodgson, In-House Head of Indirect Tax 

Chapters

• 0:00 What in-house tax teams value and want from advisor with Stephen H
• 6:19 The Indirect Tax Team that Stephen runs
• 9:04 The type of external tax advice taken by an in-house tax team. Where have to and where preferable
• 13:09 What do in-house tax teams want from external tax advisors?
• 15:18 What level of responsiveness are clients happy with?
• 20:10 Do in-house tax teams of large business only use Big 4?
• 23:04 The impact of the cost of the advice
• 25:45 Factor: industry knowledge and knowledge of the business
• 28:22 Practical advice: what this actually means for an in-house tax team
• 34:24 What does a bad exernal advisor look like? Bad traits/attributes
• 36:27 How to deal with giving advice or info the client is not going to want to hear
• 40:35 Who does the interacting with external advisors in in-house tax teams?
• 43:10 How to best build a relationship with an in-house tax team from scratch
• 51:15 What Stephen would do differently now with his clients, being on both sides of practice and industry
• 54:36 How an exernal tax advisor can be the advisor that an in-house tax team wants to work with and value?