Assistant Director, Large Business, Scotland & Northern Ireland, HM Revenue and Customs, Belfast

Summary

Large Business is responsible for HMRC’s compliance work with the largest and most complex business customers, businesses which account for some 40% of HMRC’s annual revenues.

Our strategy is applied to the UK’s 2,000 most complex businesses, which have each been allocated a Customer Compliance Manager (CCM) reflecting our resource intensive, cooperative compliance approach. Using this approach we subject these businesses to an exceptional level of scrutiny and are actively investigating more than half of them at any one time.

This is an exciting and challenging time to be part of Large Business. The taxation of multinationals remains the focus of keen media and Parliamentary interest. We are in the process of implementing a package of measures to increase large business tax compliance and transparency, including the legislative changes flowing from the OECD-led base erosion and profit shifting agenda. In addition we have recently implemented our new enhanced approach to risk assessment.

Large Business is fully engaged with HMRC’s transformation programmes which will provide opportunities to build our compliance capabilities. You will play a key role in influencing and implementing these changes.

Large Business is currently organised into six regions and two specialist teams, each headed by an SCS PB1 Deputy Director who form the Large Business Leadership Team (LBLT). Brian Redford leads the Scotland and Northern Ireland Region, with offices in Aberdeen, Belfast, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Job description

As senior leaders in Large Business, Assistant Directors play a key role in leadership within the region.

The Assistant Director will be peer managed by the Regional Deputy Director. As a senior leader in Large Business, you will own a wide portfolio of responsibilities:

Key Responsibilities:

• You will play a key role in leadership within the region, building technical capability, building engagement and facilitating change.
• Assistant Directors manage HMRC’s relationship with the UK’s largest and most complex business customers who are high profile, household names.
• This involves overseeing the department’s interaction with their significant customer operations, their very large tax/duties payments, large multi-national aspects, frequent politically sensitive issues and regular large-scale mergers and acquisitions.
• Assistant Directors also lead on specific tax or leadership issues across the Directorate or the wider Department.
• Establish, build and maintain professional relationships with key senior customers across tax and business responsibilities
• Develop a deep understanding of customers and their business drivers influencing their attitude to risk.
• Discuss, explore and resolve complex tax planning issues with customers; resolving differences of view where possible
• Carefully manage complex, sensitive and potentially challenging reputational issues
• Lead large scale national projects across customer groups, sectors or risk themes to deliver compliance outcomes
• Ringmaster communications and interventions, including appropriately involving HMRCs specialists, ensuring successful delivery of outcomes
• Coach and mentor Customer Compliance Managers and tax professional colleagues, building capability and troubleshooting complex cases
• Ensure CPD is up to date and share expertise with HMRC colleagues

Responsibilities

As senior leaders in Large Business, Assistant Directors play a key role in leadership, building technical capability, engagement and facilitating change.

You will be able to demonstrate:

• Leadership
Experience of providing visible leadership to support long term strategies, with a proven ability to develop a motivated, engaged and high performing workforce and a commitment to diversity and inclusion

• Strategic awareness
Experience of formulating, leading and implementing strategies, policies and programmes which cross organisational boundaries

• Communicating and influencing
The ability to manage effective relationships with internal and external stakeholders at senior level, strong collaboration and influencing skills to build an effective network of key stakeholders quickly. Excellent communication skills to engage confidently in a wide range of situations

• Delivering at pace
Strong customer service ethos and focus on delivery with the ability to respond quickly to changing circumstances and tight timescales as priorities evolve and escalate issues for resolution

• Specialist knowledge and experience
Recent compliance experience of working on the most challenging and complex tax technical issues. Knowledge and experience of the Insurance, Oil and Gas or Alcohols sectors is desirable

• Academic/Professional Qualifications

Qualifications

The post requires the individual to have either:
• Core Professional Training or be 'Fully Trained' Inspectors or Chartered Tax Adviser
• AIIT (Including Paper 4*) or CCAB or a Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies membership qualification e.g. Institute of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales (ICAEW), Institute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland (ICAS), Chartered Institute of Public Finance Accountancy (CIPFA), Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)

Benefits

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension

Whatever your role, we take your career and development seriously, and want to enable you to build a really successful career with the Department and wider Civil Service. It is crucial that our employees have the right skills to develop their careers and meet the challenges ahead, and you’ll benefit from regular performance and development reviews to ensure this development is ongoing. As a Civil Service employee, you’ll be entitled to a large range of benefits.

This includes:
• 25 days annual leave on entry, increasing on a sliding scale to 30 days after 5 years’ service. This is in addition to 8 public holidays.
This will be complemented by one further day paid privilege entitlement to mark the Queen’s Birthday;
• A competitive contributory pension scheme that you can enter as soon as you join where we will make a significant contribution to the cost of your pension; where your contributions come out of your salary before any tax is taken; and where your pension will continue to provide valuable benefits for you and your family if you are too ill to continue to work or die before you retire;
• Flexible working patterns including part-time or term-time working and access to Flexible Working Schemes allowing you to vary your working day as long as you work your total hours;
• Generous paid maternity and paternity leave which is notably more than the statutory minimum offered by many other employers; and
• Childcare benefits (policy for new employees as of 5 April 2018): The government has introduced the Tax-Free Childcare (TFC) scheme. Working parents can open an online childcare account and for every £8 they pay in, the government adds £2, up to a maximum of £2000 a year for each child or £4000 for a disabled child. Parents then use the funds to pay for registered childcare. Existing employees may be able to continue to claim childcare vouchers, so please check how the policy would work for you here;

• Interest-free loans allowing you to spread the cost of an annual travel season ticket or a new bicycle;
• The opportunity to use onsite facilities including fitness centres and staff canteens (where applicable);
• Occupational sick pay.

Nationality requirements

Open to UK, Commonwealth and European Economic Area (EEA) and certain non EEA nationals. Further information on whether you are able to apply is available here.