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At RSM, you’ll discover a culture that nurtures individuality and an environment where everyone is supported to reach their potential. If you perform well, you could be given the opportunity to join one of our graduate training programmes that will help you kick-start your business career. With us, you’ll always be moving forward.
The Role
Join our tax team on a 12-month paid placement as part of your sandwich degree course and discover what it’s really like to work in business. Gain hands-on experience, build a network of contacts, and get advice from our expert mentors.
What our Tax Team does
Tax is a fact of life – it’s deducted from our wages, added to things we buy, paid by companies and individuals and rarely out of the news headlines these days. But a career in tax isn’t just about numbers. It’s about working with people, families, and businesses to really understand what they want to achieve and make sure tax doesn’t become an obstacle to their long-term goals.
We advise individuals and companies from all sectors of business, helping them comply with the complex UK tax regime and, in many cases, the tax regime of several overseas territories. Our national tax teams are split into four main teams offering distinct services to a range of clients:
Corporate Tax
Our corporate tax team is the largest part of our tax practice and advises a variety of clients, from start-ups to the largest multinationals. Corporate tax covers a wide spectrum of services including private equity structuring, M&A, international issues such as Transfer Pricing, Tax Investigations and Risk, reliefs for innovation for our IP creators, and annual tax reporting.
This team usually holds the key tax relationship with our business clients and works with a wide variety of other RSM departments including Corporate Finance, Restructuring Advisory, Audit, and Financial Reporting, as well as the other tax teams. We build relationships at boardroom level and help our team members at all levels to develop the wider business skills they need for a successful and fulfilling career
Private Client Services
Our private client services tax team deal with a wide spectrum of clients including high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals, entrepreneurial business owners, international clients, partnerships, and trusts. Building strong relationships and becoming the client’s trusted advisor is at the heart of everything we do in the private client services tax team.
We provide tax advice at every stage of our clients’ life cycle. This includes capital gains and inheritance tax advice, pensions planning, exit and succession planning, residential property tax, residence and domicile advice, tax investigations and advice on holding assets whether that be in a UK trust, offshore trust, partnership structure or personal investment company.
On a day-to-day basis, our team helps individuals, families and their businesses comply with the shifting requirements of the tax authorities and pay the right amount of tax. This includes helping private clients, trusts and partnerships complete their self-assessment tax returns. Dealing with our clients’ tax compliance gives us the ideal opportunity to build long lasting relationships and spot opportunities to offer further tax advice.
Value Added Tax
While VAT is a relatively new tax (France introduced the first system in 1954), the OECD has reported that 170 countries (and all OECD members except the USA) operate a consumption tax. Our VAT team has to get a clear understanding of the economic and commercial drivers of a transaction to help clients unravel the peculiarities of the UK VAT regime (which treats flapjacks as zero-rated but muesli bars as standard-rated) but also help clients effectively manage their international supply chains whether it is moving goods around the world or selling products to customers in other countries.
With a strong bias to advisory work, our VAT team build close relationships by meeting with clients to understand their business, liaising with HMRC and deal with complex issues on a day-to-day basis.
Employer Solutions Group
We work alongside employers to cover a whole host of issues and our work can be broken down into three broad, but very much interconnected areas of technical expertise:
- Global mobility - assisting employers when they are moving people around the world
- Share schemes and reward - helping employers to structure their incentive plans in such a way that they can properly inspire and motivate their teams
- Employment tax - working with employers to understand the tax implications of everything they provide to employees and directors
We advise employers in all of these areas, in order that they can properly meet their tax reporting obligations. Understanding our clients, their workforces and their long-term objectives is crucial in helping them do this.
What can you expect?
At RSM, you’ll be a key member of our team from day one. Our placement programme allows you to experience working in the tax team alongside current trainees and experienced members of the firm. This hands-on early experience is invaluable as you take the next steps in your career.
You’ll also benefit from on-the-job training from more senior members of the team and gain access to our internal training courses that will help you develop in the role. You will have the support of a tax buddy to assist you as you settle into your role and with your day-to-day work, and a more senior sponsor who will connect with you during your year with us to offer support and guidance on your future career opportunities within tax.
RSM’s tax placement will give you a solid foundation in a broad range of tax issues. With us, you’ll be involved in projects from day one – anything from liaising with clients to preparing and completing tax returns. The variety of work we do and the range of clients we work with means you’ll have plenty of opportunity to discover a career path that fits your interests and long-term goals. With our support, you’ll have the space to grow professionally so you can confidently take on ever-more challenging tasks.
What we look for
Tax is a technically demanding discipline, so we look for students who are always up for a challenge and are quick to grasp new subjects. While you don’t have to be a maths genius, you will need to be comfortable with numbers.
At RSM, you’ll be helping a large range of clients - from wealthy individuals to major multinationals - so it’s important that you’re adaptable. You’ll often need to explain complex technical information during client meetings and in written reports, so we’re looking for graduates with excellent verbal and written communication skills. We also look for team players who enjoy interacting with others and are curious about how businesses work. If that sounds like you, we know you’ll enjoy being part of our team.
Minimum Qualifications
Entry requirements
At RSM, we don't just look for good exam results. We think passion, personality and originality are just as important. You will need:
- 112 UCAS (new tariff) across 3 A Levels or an equivalent level 3 qualification or 104 UCAS (new tariff) across 4 Scottish Highers/Advanced Highers. Please note, RSM does not accept General Studies, AS levels or the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ)
- A predicted honours degree
UCAS changed their points system so under the old tariff it would be 280 or 260 points, respectively.
Our Recruitment Process
Please note, for those who perform well throughout our assessment process, should your first preference be unavailable, you could potentially be offered a role in another location or department. This would always be discussed with you in this instance. RSM will only take one application into consideration per recruitment cycle. We do not accept multiple applications to different vacancies.
Flexible working
At RSM we work hard to create an environment where our people can make a difference - to themselves, their career, their teams, and to the success of our firm and clients. We support all our people to work flexibly, to manage their family and other responsibilities alongside their work commitments; we believe this is key to achieving an inspiring and fulfilling working environment.
Diversity and Inclusion at RSM
At RSM, inclusion and diversity are central to our values. We have an authentic focus on intentional inclusion, enabling our people to feel they can bring their whole self to work and ensuring everyone feels supported, respected and confident to make a valuable contribution. To find out more, please visit our Diversity and Inclusion page on our Careers Website.