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M&A tax within the a public accounting setting will still be very computational since diligence is such a heavy aspect of it. You will need to understand tax concepts across a broad spectrum of areas (federal, international, state income, sales and use, payroll, property and escheat tax) and be able to quantify tax exposures based on any issues that arise in these areas during diligence. Additionally, there will be heavy use of excel in modeling the after tax cash flows under different tax structures and scenarios (stock vs asset, implication of various elections, make whole analysis etc). There will also be heavy excel modeling involved in NOLs, golden parachutes etc.
The M&A tax lawyers will take the M&A tax accountants diligence findings and incorporate them into the purchase agreement. They will do structuring as well but they can’t model in excel very well if at all so they rely on the accountants for that.
+1 to this. FYI if you’re a JD and not liking the compliance portion of public accounting (not unusual) you may want to try to look into wnt or lateral to a law firm.
I made the switch from international to m&a for the some of the same reasons you noted. I agree with A1 that you’ll need to understand a broad spectrum of tax areas for diligence, however, you’re not necessarily computing the exposures, we generally turn to specialists for that. After reps, you should start seeing these and getting an idea of how to quantify, but we always verify.
In terms of other computations, it depended on the group/project. I know some b4 have the 382 type analyses mixed in with regular m&a and others are separate. You will likely have to help with funds flows, etc., but also these are not an every day thing (more like a couple times a year MAX).
So yes, an understanding of excel is important, you don’t need to be an expert in that. Your focus will likely be on diligence.
For me, it was completely the right move. M&A is more in line with what I like to do and what I’m good at (I didn’t go to law school to fill out tax returns).