Tax Consultant at Old Mutual

Job Description

• The appointment will be made from the designated group in line with the Employment Equity Plan of Old Mutual South Africa and the specific business unit in question.
• This Cape Town based role is within the Tax Reporting team, reporting to the Lead: Group Tax Reporting Analyst. This team comprises of senior specialized tax professionals.
• The Tax Reporting teams function is to ensure accurate, efficient and timely tax input into the wider Group Finance Reporting team, to ensure that Old Mutual as a listed entity, meets its reporting requirements, with adequate tax transparency/disclosure/ reporting to relevant stakeholders. The Tax Reporting team is also responsible for interrogating the tax numbers out of the financial reporting systems, managing, computing, collating and consolidating the tax reporting requirements (including detailed computations and disclosure in the annual financial statements) across all the Old Mutual segments (including long and short-term insurance, the asset management, wealth and investment segment, as well as the Rest of Africa). The Tax Reporting team is also responsible for producing the Tax Transparency Report, as an Appendix to the Group Integrated report in compliance with Tax Standard GRI207, Principles of Responsible Investment as well as JSE requirements.
• The focus of the Group Tax team is to provide expert knowledge and support to ensure that the Group effectively and efficiently integrates tax numbers and transparency into business processes for decision making and reporting.  The team is proud to lead the OML Group disclosure and communication regarding the Group’s tax contribution in a realistic, transparent manner.

Role Overview

• The role will primarily be responsible for assisting with the OML Group tax reporting process quarterly, business planning and forecasts including coordinating the sign off process.
• Prepare guidance on the tax pack sign off to Group tax reporting team. This includes IFRS Income statement, Balance sheet, Tax notes, Headline Earnings and Adjusted Headline Earnings (“AHE”) figures with commentary
• Review of Group results, including segmental submissions, commentary and headline earnings and AHE tax for group sign off
• Prepare detail Group IFRS and AHE ETR analysis, consolidate and review BU commentary
• Review OML Statutory tax disclosure notes as per the AFS prepared by Finance AFS team and agree to HFM. Manage segmental sign off process for input into the AFS
• Monitors IFRS and AHE ETR for the Group on a monthly basis
• Consolidation of Tax reports for Audit committees and Segmental meetings
• Preparation and reconciliation of the deferred tax proof for OML including analysis.  Analysis of Group Tax balances. 
• Consolidation of tax related off-balance sheet items in the Group, and related deferred tax assets
• Reviews, manages and provides guidance on the tax accounting processes
• Assists in development and implementation of tax systems and planning opportunities for the organization and ensures that all Tax accounting requirements are met.
• Reviews and/or preparation of adhoc Tax reporting requirement as required from time to time
• Assist with the implementation of Group Tax Policy across the business
• Review of Tax Returns (including preparation of CFC computations), and Tax Ruling Applications to SARS on behalf of the business
• May prepare or assist with the preparation of Voluntary Disclosure Submissions and penalty remissions letters to SARS
• Assist with audit queries, Investor relations and other stakeholder queries
• Develop and maintain Standard operating procedures (“SOPS”) for the Group Tax reporting process.
• Assist with audit queries and other stakeholders' queries

Key Result Areas: 

Execution to deadlines, effective processes to ensure timely reporting and accountability by living Old Mutual’s values:

• Demonstrate the ability to engage, collaborate and partner with different stakeholders in order to successfully establish adequate processes for reporting on complex business transactions and circumstances
• Demonstrate the ability to remain resilient and focused in a dynamic, pressured and demanding environment
• Demonstrates a culture of high performance, commitment to deadlines and team support
• Demonstrate innovative thinking, consistent energy, drive, creativity and perseverance in order to deliver high quality results and meaningful narratives/reports
• Work together with and maintain continuous internal stakeholder engagements that strengthen relationships of trust
• Focus on integration, alignment and continuous improvement of tax reporting and sign-off processes, within Group Tax (including but not limited to, Tax Attestations to the CFO/Board, Tax Segmental Reporting, Audit Committee Tax Reporting, Stakeholder Reporting (ie Integrated Report and response to Investor Relations/JSE special requests, etc), with Group Finance and Corporate Risk and Governance processes

Tax technical, computations and advisory/commercial competence

Taxation Law & Practice

• Ability to demonstrate strong, breadth and depth of knowledge of tax legislation in general (statutory, regulatory and common-law rules), proposed changes to tax legislation and interpretations or best practice
• Responsible for communicating tax technical and compliance and reporting updates and provide adequate training and assistance to stakeholders/business segments on changes to ensure quality reporting (eg deferred tax, etc)
• Responsible for communicating and explaining the application of tax legislation and the difference in accounting treatment, with regards to unusual and complex business transactions
• Implementing and monitoring continuous process improvement, required controls and governance in response to proposed changes in tax legislation (that is, anticipate impact on business segments and reporting), while identifying potential tax risks.
• Assists in the input into Old Mutual Group strategy on tax de-risking and mitigation or management of tax risk, in order to ensure minimization of negative tax impact on the Old Mutual Group
• Understands and identifies potential risks to changes to reporting systems/formats/structures, to ensure that Group Tax Business Requirement Specifications are included in Group wide projects for product/process improvement and test against parameters to ensure BRS is met.
• Identify opportunities for tax reporting process improvement, standardization where relevant, data quality and system changes to improve quality, transparency and effectiveness of tax reporting
• Knowledge of IFRS 17 impact and/or other IFRS impact on the OML Group

 Taxation Computations/Tax Reporting Packs 

• Responsible for maintaining Group Tax Reporting Packs and ensuring packs are aligned to latest changes in tax legislation and IFRS.
• Demonstrate a strong command of tax reporting in general and ability to achieve effective, timely reporting to deadlines (ie, deferred tax rules, principles of deferred tax proof, 5 Funds splits, effective tax rate reconciliations (by line of business, AHE ETR, and IFRS ETR), tax transparency (ie GRI207 criteria, PRI criteria, JSE (Tax) Disclosure requirements), IFRIC 23/IAS 37 provisioning, broad principles of transfer pricing benchmarks and disclosure, etc)
• Demonstrate the ability to take a pragmatic approach and apply tax technical knowledge in preparation and review of tax computations/reporting across tax types - in consultation with Tax Subject Matter Experts in Group Tax – in order to ensure accuracy, completeness and quality compliance and reporting.
• Provide Business Segments and own team with guidance in the completion and review of tax computations/deferred tax proof/disclosures, etc
• Monitor completeness and accuracy of tax information for tax reporting
• Identify and evaluate impact of differences between tax returns submitted and assessments from Revenue Authorities versus tax disclosure in annual financial statements and identify the appropriate action in response to these (ie prior year adjustments, overs-unders provisions, etc)

Tax Accounting

• In addition to the above, strong numeracy and literacy skills and the ability to apply tax technical knowledge in order to ensure correct accounting treatment/provisioning for the tax consequences of transactions/new products in the financial statements of business segments
• Demonstrate a deep 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 for tax accounting/reporting outcomes
• In addition to the above, compute tax analytics and assess tax contribution trends across all taxes on a regular basis

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
• Assists in providing tax technical, pragmatic 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
• Assists in providing targeted tax technical training to business units to ensure tax quality tax compliance and reporting/disclosures, implementation of tax advice, and timely consideration and/or identification of tax implications of new transactions

Requirements:

• Qualified CA(SA) preferred with minimum Honors in Tax.
• 3 years or more relevant tax compliance, tax consulting experience and/or tax reporting experience
• HFM, Oracle and OneStream experience is highly beneficial
• Strong Financial Services/Life Insurance Tax related experience is essential
• Strong knowledge of financial services industry and understanding of Life Insurance Products
• IFRS knowledge particularly related to tax disclosure, tax accounting and group reporting
• Good operational understanding of the Financial Services Industry, Life Insurance Companies, Unit Trusts, Lisps, Asset Managers and short-term insurers.
• Strong Tax Compliance and or Tax Reporting experience

Personal attributes 

• Displays a positive attitude
• Strong numeracy and literacy skills, in particular, excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Possess a strong drive and determination to succeed
• Displays a passion for accounting, tax and career aspirations
• Demonstrative ability to take initiative, be a self-starter and able to execute effectively
• Takes ownership and accountability of deliverables and career aspirations
• Resilient, delivers high quality of service delivery and meets reporting deadlines, under pressure
• Agile, adaptable and ability to cope with a dynamic environment
• Demonstrates ability to collaborate effectively across multiple stakeholders
• Demonstrate reliability, integrity and professionalism