Two questions for those of you at Big 4/other national firms:

1) At what level do you really start to see the entire tax return from start to finish?

2) How much is the “why” emphasized in training new associates on how to perform certain tasks?

I work at a smaller regional firm with roughly 70 employees (never been at a firm larger than 300 people), and I’ve been involved with many interviews of candidates from Big 4 firms where I walked away very unimpressed. Cont...

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Your observation is spot-on, OP. I’ve noticed the same thing in the past year. I started my career in Big Four for 2.5 years. I recently transitioned to a smaller tax PA firm (50-ish people). I feel that my technical knowledge is pretty limited. As a tax associate in an understaffed group, the focus is always churning out more work with little learning. Just going through the motions. Tax changes from the TCJA? Handled by the Seniors and Managers. The people in my group in particular also suck at teaching newbies, too. I’m glad I made the move to a smaller firm – I am learning a lot more and the culture is so much better.

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I am aware, M1, and I have. It is tough to devote time to learning when you’re constantly over-utilized and are expected to churn out work and go go go. Higher-ups not giving you the time of day to help answer ‘why’ questions aids in the difficulty

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This was taught by a few of my professors at a top state feeder school. They had Big 4 experience and worked at local alliance firms. At Big 4 you specialize and focus on more narrow areas, at smaller firms you wear multiple hats and cover more variety of tax, and some even rotate tax/audit duties throughout the year. You’ll also experience more bookkeeping and adjusting entries at a smaller firm.

I also noticed similar to the above having interned at local, regional, and Big 4 during my collegiate years.

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I would say, who do you think is leaving Big4 at the associate or senior level? They are typically not the most highly rated people. But for sure it’s a more narrow focus at Big4. Ive been here 13 years and have solely worked on asset mgmt partnership returns. Each engagement is different, but in many cases you will see the entire tiered structure from portfolio company to mgmt company. But individuals is a different story.

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Me too. I’ve typically always seen the return from start to finish.

It sounds like you interviewed from someone in a speciality group and not in Core Tax. We have a group at Deloitte that does all fixed asset calculations, all M&e studies, all inventory calcs, etc.

Our staff/seniors see the entire return but as others mention, it’s easy to coast by until you’re a exp senior.

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Speaking from my own experience here. I originally started off my career at a mid-tier firm before transferring to KPMG a year later. I agree with the point made above about how people at mid tier firms typically “wear multiple hats” and may touch different areas of tax (Fed, international, individual, & SALT).
The reason for that is typically because B4 has the resources to utilize and to go to their “specialists” for complex tax matters.

Getting back to your question you posted above about seeing a return from start to finish: it obviously depends what clients you’re on, but when I was at the mid tier firm, I typically would do random areas of a project and would not see an entire return from start to finish. When I transitioned to B4, I feel like even as an associate you have the ability to see the return from start to finish more since you can utilize the offshore team to make inputs into GoRS or OIT, have them rollover mechanical work papers, etc. so that the associate can understand and review things more from a technical standpoint.

TL DR; B4. You’re exposed to more work (typically) and have the resources to leverage to learn the “technicals”.

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The thing is at the end of the day - I really don’t believe that small firms teach more. ASC 740 is where the small firms and middle market firms struggle and that market B4 has locked. I audit tons of these provisions every year and I struggle with BDO/GT prepared provisions to get them to the right place. RSM seems to have a good tax accounting group in my market.

If you can’t figure out a provision and prove it out, who cares if the return forms tick and tie.

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Not really. I’m one of the competency leader for ASC 740 in my local office so while I have my own clients, people come to me for questions all year round and the big difference is that the other B4/RSM know they fucked up when you point it out. GT/BDO don’t have a clue they fucked up and they try to ambush me with there Washington people.

Nice people and I had the opportunity to teach BDO’s ASC 740 local market leader on a few concepts the other week but you can tell, ASC 740 just isn’t there at the smaller firms.

It seemed like it was through no fault of their own, however. A lot of them had a few years of experience, but their experience would only be in working on specific aspects of tax returns (e.g. fixed assets for an S Corp), which I understand because of the complexity of the returns you all work on. We have hired a few in the past, but none of them seemed to really understand why certain tasks were completed in certain ways from a tax technical standpoint. I’m thinking this may only be the case for Staff/Senior level Big 4 candidates; seems like they know much more once they become Managers which makes sense but I wanted to make sure my thinking isn’t far off so I have a really good perspective in these interviews.

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I've wondered this as well. At RSM this doesn't really happen because you will usually get smaller and easy to understand returns in your first year before you begin working on massive multistate returns.

Even on large returns you will typically see most of it start to finish. ITAX or a specialty group might take over certain aspects, but you will absolutely see it all through return prep early on in your career.

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Good to know, thanks for the response!

In big 4 when people work in larger groups, it’s easy for them to coast by if they don’t have the desire to dig deeper and understand the technical stuff or if the senior/manager does not bother teaching the same stuff to multiple people. In mid size accounting firms where people in smaller groups, people are likely to invest more time in the staff since they work closely together and they take more responsibility for their work. (Based on my experience from working in both midsize and big 4.)

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1) At BT you see the entire tax return start to finish at Staff I, probably due to our client size. I’ve only cut a staff off when it’s a messy new client engagement, the return gets unusually complex, or the engagement becomes a huge sprint where there’s no time.

2) Associate training in general and emphasizing the “why” is dependent on the senior or manager you work with. Some people take the time and effort to invest in associates, some people don’t. Recently, BT has been going downhill in this area, at least in my immediate group/ office.

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That is true OP. I was in the core partnership tax in another B4, spent my four years there only doing Fed K1s. they had other team to handle the return or any states due to size of the clients. Then I went to a mid sized firm, picked up the rest, realized how limited I was.

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I have heard this exact sort of complaint *within EY* from the perspective of a senior manager who was from a smaller office complaining about working with staff from a bigger office.

So I think there's something to it, but it's based on the size/complexity of the return or project. I definitely know when I first started out, I had some returns that I only addressed a small portion of (and it wouldn't have been feasible for me to prep everything), but for smaller clients, I was usually involved throughout. Same thing with tax provision reviews, TBH. I definitely experienced that I had a bigger view of certain projects as I was promoted (and then I delegated specific areas to the staff, continuing the cycle, I guess?)

But I also definitely think specialty groups is part of the answer. I switched away from compliance to do accounting methods and other work like that very early (maybe too early?). I definitely have had the experience of knowing intimately how to perform, say, a unicap study and having a beautiful and complex workbook for it, but then *never* doing an 1125-A.

My bosses in the accounting methods group could tell me the why about unicap specific things, but how it was reported on the return was just not in our scope and was never discussed unless we had to reconcile or fix something that the compliance team had done improperly.

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Thanks to everyone for all the feedback on this post! I absolutely appreciate it as it’ll give me more items to think about in these interviews.

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