2024 UK tax practice market report highlights: Indirect tax

Earlier in the year we released our UK tax practice market report and salary guide 2023-2024, highlighting the different areas of tax. Each area contained their own market update, including the current and forecasted challenges and opportunities, and the most popular portion, the salary data. Following on from the success of the report, we decided to launch a series of articles to dive even further into the data we collected from the survey, broken down into these different areas of tax. These articles take a closer look at topics such as flexible and hybrid working arrangements, benefits packages and DEI.

Indirect tax market overview

The indirect tax jobs market has remained steady throughout the past 12 months, having shown moderate demand throughout the year. Much like
corporate tax, competition remains fierce for the best talent. Unlike direct taxes (and certainly corporate tax) there has been a much more measured approach to candidate attraction throughout the year – we have not seen the sheer volume of demand that so characterised the professional services firms during the last 24 months.

Within the Big 4 and Top 6 demand within certain sectors has remained strong, particularly those where the advice required is outside of day to day, business as usual, such as indirect tax technology and processing or litigation. The skills required in these roles are not easily transferred from other areas of the business and as clients increasingly demand specialist advice, firms need to recruit externally which has helped prop up salaries and total compensation, particularly at the Manager and Senior Manager level. And as we can see within the indirect tax market – remuneration is the key driver when looking for a new role.

45.45% of our respondents chose this as their top priority when exploring new opportunities, followed by learning and development opportunities at 20.45%. We can see that culture and working location are not a particular concern for those within indirect tax.

How Brewer Morris can help you navigate the tax market

For further information on the market, you can download our UK tax practice market report and salary guide. Alternatively, if you would like to discuss the contents of this article in greater detail or have a conversation about your career or hiring needs, get in touch with Hu Kabir.