Senior Tax Advisor at Old Mutual South Africa

Behave effectively and accountably by living Old Mutual’s values in a senior tax advisor role:

• Demonstrate the ability to make commercial decisions using sound judgement, a strong work ethic and irreproachable integrity.
• Demonstrate the ability to engage, collaborate and partner with different stakeholders in order to successfully establish adequate commercial solutions for complex business situations and transactions.
• Demonstrate the ability to remain resilient and focused in a dynamic and demanding environment.
• Demonstrate a 'solutionist mindset', emotional intelligence, resilience and maturity.
• Demonstrate the ability to mentor, motivate, work with talented professionals and actively support individual growth.
• Lead by example to cultivate a culture of optimal performance, team work and team support that encourages high levels of employee confidence and satisfaction.
• Demonstrate innovative thinking, consistent energy, drive, creativity and perseverance in order to deliver results.
• Manage team resource capacity while ensuring enhanced team productivity and efficiency.
• Maintain continuous tax representation in investment origination fora, product and risk committees and meetings of financial managers - in order to enable strategic tax input in investment assessment, product design and financial decision-making processes.
• Maintain continuous internal stakeholder engagements that strengthen relationships.
• Build strong relationships with Old Mutual legal, risk and governance departments, external tax advisors, senior counsel and external stakeholders.
• Focus on integration and alignment of tax sign-off processes with corporate risk and governance processes in the designated business cluster.

Possess solid tax technical and commercial competence:

Taxation Law

• Display strong, deep knowledge of all tax legislation (tax statutory, regulatory and common-law rules), changes to tax legislation and interpretations or practices. Experience in international taxation (specifically CFCs) would be an advantage.
• Demonstrate the ability to engage with external stakeholders (ASISA, SAICA, SARS and National Treasury etc.) including participation on industry committees on tax legislation, tax practice and national tax strategy, and participate in and influence policy formation.
• Communicate tax technical and compliance updates and provide training and assistance to stakeholder’s/business units on changes in tax legislation.
• Communicate and explain the application of tax legislation with regard to unusual and complex tax transactions.
• Implement and monitor processes, controls and governance in response to changes in tax legislation while identifying potential tax risks and providing strategic direction to the business.
• Implement OM strategy on tax de-risking and mitigation or management of tax risk, in order to ensure minimization of negative tax implications to the OM Group.

Possess solid tax technical and commercial competence:

Taxation Statutory Returns:

• Demonstrate the ability to take a pragmatic approach and apply tax technical knowledge in preparation and review of statutory returns across tax types – in order to ensure accuracy, completeness and statutory compliance.
• Provide thought leadership, strategic and technical guidance in the completion and review of statutory returns.
• Demonstrate the ability to monitor completeness and accuracy of compliance across the relevant designated business cluster.
• Demonstrate the ability to evaluate differences between tax returns submitted and assessments from regulators - and identify the appropriate action in response to these.

Tax accounting:

• Demonstrate strong numeracy and literacy skills and the ability to apply tax technical knowledge in order to ensure correct accounting for the tax implications of transactions entered into in the financial statements of entities.
• Demonstrate a solid understanding of the tax accounting standards in order to resolve unusual and complex tax accounting issues in accordance with applicable accounting standards.
• Recommend and advise on process improvements to tax accounting.
• Review tax reconciliations, effective tax rates and budgets, in order to ensure that tax implications are accurately reported in the annual financial statements, and that trends are monitored.
• Provide input into Business Unit strategic plans.

Tax Advisory:

• Demonstrate the ability to analyze transactions and new products from a tax perspective, and to make recommendations for changes in order to comply with tax legislation.
• Provide tax technical, commercial and transaction implementation advice on inter alia financial structured investments/divestments and products (including preference shares/hybrid instruments), derivative transactions, group mergers and acquisitions, fund (regulated and non-regulated) structuring, offshore expansions, tax due diligences and projects undertaken.
• Provide targeted tax technical training to business units to ensure tax compliance, implementation of tax advice, and timely consideration and/or identification of tax implications of new transactions.
• Provide thought leadership and strategic guidance on replying to SARS’ queries.