Job Description

Location
Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, London, Manchester, Nottingham
About the job
Summary
This role can be based out of one of the listed SOLS locations above, but if not London, regular travel will be expected to create a presence in London.

The Solicitor’s Office and Legal Services (SOLS) is HMRC’s Legal Group. It is headed by Alan Evans, the General Counsel and Solicitor, who has overall accountability for all legal services to HMRC, whether these are provided internally or commissioned from the private sector.
Our 1,250 staff conduct legal work for every part of HMRC, and our work impacts on all HMRC’s customers. We also have oversight of HMRC’s advisory accountants and manage ministerial correspondence and Freedom of Information requests for HMRC.
SOLS has four directorates:
• Litigation (major, complex, high value) (this role)
• Business Tax advisory, in which the CAA team are based
• Personal Tax, Benefits and Credits, and Corporate Services advisory
• Legal Operations and Business Transformation

Our work includes:
• Advice on the design and implementation of tax policy through fiscal events (the Budget and the annual Finance Act) and drafting secondary legislation. This includes working with the Treasury and Parliamentary Counsel as well as specialists and experts across HMRC.
• Conducting all of HMRC’s litigation, including handling statutory reviews of HMRC’s tax decisions and statutory appeals.
• Operational legal and expert accountancy advice.
• Commercial law support.
• Criminal advisory work.
• Insolvency and debt enforcement work.
• Advice and litigation services to the Valuation Office Agency (an HMRC agency) responsible for valuing land for business rates and council tax purposes.
SOLS is at the forefront of work in Government on EU Exit, working in partnership with the Treasury and the wider Government Legal Profession.
SOLS is building a future in which we will:

• Support HMRC’s objectives through high quality, timely, fit for purpose legal and other professional services.
• Help maximise revenue for the Exchequer and public – in particular through excellent litigation, safeguarding billions of pounds of tax.
• Invest in the skills and professionalism of our people and in digital and other tools that they need to do their job.
• Build strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
• Ensure an open, diverse and inclusive culture, where everyone feels valued and respected.
Job description
The Commissioners’ Advisory Accountant (CAA) is a key leadership role in HMRC with responsibility for ensuring that HMRC benefits from high quality, professional accountancy advice across the whole of its business. The CAA deveops the strategy to shape the role of accountancy in HMRC, including working with other HMRC leaders to innovate, exploit and enhance the capabilities and professionalism of HMRC’s accountancy functions.
The post-holder is the Head of Profession for Advisory and Forensic Accountants, and is part of HMRC’s senior leadership community. The post-holder also leads the insolvency Governance and Professionalism team in SOLS.
Key Responsibilities include:
• Increasing the influence of the profession in HMRC decision making; working with the CCG Strategic Accountancy Lead to address all operational accounting risks in HMRC;
• working proactively with business leads to identify and manage accounting related risks and opportunities throughout HMRC;
• ensuring that all tax legislation and guidance is developed in line with high quality accounting advice;
• ensuring that litigation cases have high quality accountancy support, including instructing and managing experts;
• building and maintaining a wide range of external and internal relationships to influence changes to accounting standards, company law or tax law, including with
– HMRC’s Policy colleagues;
– HM Treasury;
– The FRC and IASB;
– (BEIS);
– Professional accountancy firms.
• assuring the quality of accountancy advice provided through accountants embedded in HMRC business area;
• managing recruitment, training and professionalism for all Advisory & Forensic Accountants;
• Being Head of Profession for Advisory and Forensic Accountants in HMRC ensuring effective career paths, enhanced professionalism and closer links with other professions in HMRC and other accountants in government to benefit the accountants and HMRC;
• Being responsible for leading a team of over 15 accountants within Solicitor’s Office and Legal Services (SOLS);
• Being responsible for managing the Head of the Insolvency Profession in HMRC and the Insolvency Governance and Professionalism team, and;
• Being part of SOLS Senior Leadership Group contributing to the corporate and collective leadership of SOLS

Responsibilities
The successful candidate will be a strong accountant and accountancy leader.
In addition to holding a professional qualification in accountancy (see qualifications section below), you must be able to demonstrate your potential and capability in the following areas:

• An excellent leader and manager, with experience of building capability and driving continuous improvement;
• Excellent technical accounting ability to command the respect of all key stakeholders – standard setters, policy and tax specialists, taxpayers and Big 4, and other, accountancy firms;
• Strong interpersonal, negotiating and influencing skills, with the ability to build effective relationships and work in partnership with senior stakeholders, both internally and externally; and

• The ability to work flexibly and at pace, juggling competing and often short-term demands across a wide range of business priorities.
Qualifications
• A professional qualification in accountancy is essential together with significant post-qualification experience in roles that involved giving advice on, and making decisions about, accounting treatments adopted by private sector corporate entities and partnerships.
• Candidates should also have continuing membership of one of the following accountancy bodies: ICAEW, ACCA, ICAS or ICAI
Qualifications
A professional qualification in accountancy is essential together with significant post-qualification experience in roles that involved giving advice on, and making decisions about, accounting treatments adopted by private sector corporate entities and partnerships.
Memberships
Candidates should have continuing membership of one of the following accountancy bodies: ICAEW, ACCA, ICAS or ICAI
Benefits
Benefits
• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension
Things you need to know
Security
Successful candidates must pass a disclosure and barring security check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check.
Selection process details
Selection
The interviewing and selection of applicants will be led by Mark Wilson together with a selected panel of his colleagues within the Legal and Accounting team.

Shortlist
• A panel, including the hiring manager, will assess your application in order to select those applications demonstrating the best fit with the role by considering the evidence you have provided against the criteria set out in the ‘Person Specification’ section. Failure to address any or all of these criteria may affect your application
• A decision is expected to be made on the 29th November and all shortlisted candidates will be advised of the outcome shortly afterwards.
• Please note that all shortlisted candidates will be expected to undertake a tax compliance check prior to the final interview process.
• All shortlisted candidates will be offered an opportunity to have an informal conversation with a member of the panel. This is not an assessment phase, rather it is an opportunity for each candidate to gain greater insight into the context of the role. This is optional but highly recommended.

Assessment
• If you are shortlisted, you may be asked to take part in an Staff Engagement Exercises. This assessment will not result in a pass or fail decision. Rather, it is designed to support the panel’s decision making and highlight areas for the panel to explore further at interview.
• As part of this assessment, you will be asked to attend an interview in order to have a more in-depth discussion of your previous experience and professional competence.
• Full details of the assessment process will be made available to shortlisted candidates, if required.
• We will send you a copy of any report for any assessment that you may have undergone as part of the recruitment process (where applicable).

Indicative Timeline

The anticipated timetable is as follows: please note that these dates are only indicative at this stage and could be subject to change. If you are unable to meet these timeframes, please let us know in your application letter.

The anticipated timetable is as follows:

Advert Closing Date – 25th November 2019
Short List Meeting – 29th November 2019
Assessments – 6th & 9th December 2019
Interviews – 18th & 19th December 2019

Interviews will take place in London. Candidates are asked to note the above timetable, exercising flexibility through the recruitment and selection process.

How to Apply

Job Types: Full-Time. Salaries: 80,000 - 100,000.

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