Tax Consultant - RoA Tax Reporting & Accounting at Old Mutual South Africa

Job Description

• Aligned to the Old Mutual Limited Group Tax function, the purpose of the Old Mutual Africa Regions (OMAR) Tax team is to oversee the tax affairs of the OMAR Segment, to ensure that tax risks are identified timeously, well understood, managed and mitigated. '
• The function, in the main, is a business partner to in-country Finance teams, providing specialist tax support for decision-making and ensuring that tax reporting and compliance processes are effectively and efficiently integrated into wider OMAR business processes.
• The OMAR Tax team is a part of and reports into the broader Old Mutual Limited (OML) Group Tax function. We are seeking an ambitious, passionate, career-orientated Chartered Accountant to join our team.

The successful candidate will, amongst others, be involved in:

• Tax governance, oversight and compliance: to ensure that tax controls over tax reporting and compliance processes are operating effectively to facilitate effective tax risk management and reporting of taxation matters arising in the Segment, while also supporting in-country Finance teams to manage tax risk within tax risk management parameters.
• Tax reporting: including the extraction, interrogation of tax numbers out of financial reporting systems, and managing, computing/ collating, and consolidating the tax reporting requirements in line with reporting deadlines.
• Tax advisory: the provision of expert guidance and support on all major transactions.
• Tax projects: the provision of support on special projects across the OMAR Segment, to achieve automation/standardisation/continuous improvement objectives.

KEY RESULTS AREAS

Effective and accountable leadership is essential, by living Old Mutual’s values, including:

• A strong work ethic and irreproachable integrity.
• Resilience essential in a dynamic and demanding environment.
• Leading by example to cultivate a culture of output-driven, solution-orientated, high-performance, teamwork.
• Lateral-thinking, innovative mindset and strong drive to persevere to deliver results and continuously improve towards a benchmark of excellence.
• Building and maintaining relationships with internal and external stakeholders (for example, internal Legal, Risk and Governance teams, CFOs and in-country finance teams, external tax subject matter experts, industry bodies, amongst others). 
• Identifying opportunities for improvement, standardization and enhancement or automation of processes and systems.

As part of a wider team, involvement in reporting processes, including but not limited to the following:

Effective and accountable leadership is essential, by living Old Mutual’s values, including:

• A strong work ethic and irreproachable integrity.
• Resilience essential in a dynamic and demanding environment.
• Leading by example to cultivate a culture of output-driven, solution-orientated, high-performance, teamwork.
• Lateral-thinking, innovative mindset and strong drive to persevere to deliver results and continuously improve towards a benchmark of excellence.
• Building and maintaining relationships with internal and external stakeholders (for example, internal Legal, Risk and Governance teams, CFOs and in-country finance teams, external tax subject matter experts, industry bodies, amongst others). 
• Identifying opportunities for improvement, standardization and enhancement or automation of processes and systems.

As part of a wider team, involvement in reporting processes, including but not limited to the following:

REPORTING & ANALYTICS

• Assessment of tax process and financial impacts as a result of changes to Tax Legislative/Practice Changes or Business Structural Changes;
• Contribution towards establishing best practice, tax accounting and reporting processes for interim and year end reporting, forecasting and business planning for tax reporting in line with OML’s Group requirements;
• Effective Tax Rate Analysis and commentary;
• Review and/or preparation of tax disclosure in Annual Financial Statements and the OML Integrated Reporting Suite (including the Tax Transparency Report);
• Remediation of legacy reporting issues, and identification and monitoring of new issues arising.

The following skills are critical:

• Strong numeracy and literacy skills and the ability to apply tax technical knowledge to ensure complete and accurate accounting and reporting of the tax consequences of transactions concluded during the year in the annual financial statements of affected entities, including deferred tax, effective tax rate reconciliations, provisions for uncertain tax positions, notes the financial statements, etc.
• Strong understanding of the tax accounting standards in order to resolve unusual and complex tax accounting and reporting matters in accordance with applicable accounting standards and tax laws.

GOVERNANCE

• Operationalising the OML Group Tax Policy and codes of best practice and testing to ensure these are adhered to across the Business and across all tax types;
• Driving the process to ensure Standard Operating Procedures are reviewed, updated, and aligned to the OML Tax Risk Policy and in-country governance benchmarks;
• Monitor the process of remediation of tax issues and risks arising in the segment, and ensuring appropriate provisions are raised and reported timeously;
• Escalation and/or reporting through the appropriate channels of significant tax matters in line with the OML Tax Risk Policy;
• Responsibility for ensuring appropriate training (internal and external) is delivered to segment tax and finance teams;
• Monitoring the tax control environment and conducting health checks to ensure that the controls are adequate and effective;

TAX ADVISORY

• Provision of advice/guidance to the segment and to in country teams/ business units on tax related matters, including advice on complex transactions and/or new products;
• Working with in-country teams to assess the impact of legislative changes/practice and managing processes to implement changes in country;
• Working with in-country teams to derive tax planning and tax saving opportunities
• Driving the implementation of strategies to minimise tax risk in the segment
• Tax Dispute and controversy support;.
• Proactively seek areas for tax process automation;
• Tax Technology: drive process to ensure that tax requirements are scoped in and delivered by vendors implemented by vendors and/or internal project implementation teams 

QUALIFICATIONS AND CRITICAL EXPERIENCE

• Qualified Chartered Accountant (CA(SA)) with at least 3 years of experience in a professional services firm in core tax advisory, compliance and reporting

PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Resilience. Ability to perform under pressure,
• Strong inter-personal skills
• Adaptable and able to cope with a dynamic environment. Must be a self-starter have a sense of urgency and drive matters to completion (get things done).
• Must display emotional maturity and resilience and able to multi-task (manage the outcomes to deadlines of multiple engagements).
• Professionalism and Reliability is critical.
• Maintain confidentiality of all information, both from internal and external sources.
• Display solid business acumen.

CORE COMPETENCIES

• Attitude
• Qualification / Expertise
• Drive 
• Passion
• Initiative / New Ideas
• Accountability / Integrity
• Resilience / Ability to perform under pressure
• Performance / Agility
• Relationship Building / Collaborative / Team
• Professionalism