Tax professionals - what are your biggest career complaints and frustrations?

Do you think there's a difference between public accounting tax work vs. industry/corporate tax departments? I've only been in public and wondering if jumping to industry would solve some of these problems.

Public vs. industry presents different challenges. Industry generally offers better work-life balance and more consistent hours, but you'll likely deal with more corporate politics and often less career advancement. The technology issues tend to be worse in industry - many corporate tax departments are working with systems that haven't been updated in 10+ years because they're not seen as revenue-generating. Public accounting firms are at least slowly improving their tech, even if it's still behind where it should be.

How does it handle more complex situations like partnership K-1s or foreign income reporting? Most automation tools I've tried fall apart when anything gets remotely complicated.

I'm skeptical about these AI tools - does it actually save you meaningful time or is it just another thing you have to double-check anyway? And do clients understand you're using AI to process their sensitive financial docs?

For partnership K-1s, it's actually surprisingly good - it can extract all the box values and even identifies which boxes need special attention based on the specific values. For foreign income, it handles the basic forms well, though for really complex international situations I still do manual review. Regarding time savings, it cuts my document processing time by about 70%. And you're right to be concerned about accuracy, but it actually flags potential errors or inconsistencies for review, which has helped catch things I might have missed. As for client concerns, I'm transparent that I use advanced software to process documents, but emphasize that all final work is reviewed by me personally.

How exactly does this work? Do you give them your phone number and they just call you when they get through? Seems sketchy to give access to client tax info to some third party.

Yeah right. I've spent literally DAYS on hold with the IRS over the years. No way some service magically gets through when millions of tax pros can't. Sounds like snake oil to me.

It uses a callback system. You enter your phone number on their website along with which IRS department you need to reach. Their system uses automated dialers to wait in the queue, and once they reach a human agent, they connect the call to your phone. You don't share any client tax info with them - they're just managing the hold process, and you speak directly with the IRS agent. I was totally skeptical too. But this tax season I had five different client notices to resolve, and getting through to the IRS was taking 2-3 hours each time. With Claimyr, I just went about my day and got calls when agents were reached. Don't know how they do it, but it works.

This is super helpful! Do you think there are specific industry sectors or company types that tend to value tax expertise better than others? Are there particular red flags you look for when considering a new position?

Financial services (banking, insurance, investment firms) and large multinational tech companies typically pay the best for tax roles. They understand that good tax planning directly impacts their bottom line. Red flags include job descriptions requiring expertise in too many different tax areas (domestic, international, state/local, etc.) without appropriate compensation. Also beware of positions where you're the only tax person at the company - you'll end up doing everything from payroll tax to international structuring without support. Watch out for companies that treat tax as purely a compliance function rather than a strategic department. And always ask about technology investment - nothing worse than being stuck with Excel spreadsheets for complex tax work because leadership won't invest in proper tools.

This! I switched to a lower-paying role because my new company offers true flexibility (not just "flexible if you get your work done" which always means 60+ hour weeks anyway). Having actual control over my schedule and being able to work remotely most days has been life-changing for my mental health.