Why is the Tax group better? Forum

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Why is the Tax group better?

Post by Anonymous User » Sun Sep 16, 2018 9:10 pm

Everyone seems to think that Tax group has the best work/life balance, or that it's as good as BigLaw gets or whatever, but what's the deal? Is this true? Why?

toast and bananas

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Re: Why is the Tax group better?

Post by toast and bananas » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:20 am

This depends on what you consider "work life balance" and what other practice groups you're comparing too. Do they bill fewer hours than other groups? No, not by a long shot. Are there fewer fire drills than M&A/CapM? Yes, certainly. The learning curve is also much, much steeper. If you don't love tax I would highly advise against joining the group - there just aren't many exit options and you will probably hate your life.

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Re: Why is the Tax group better?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:24 am

Tax associate here: generally we don't have a ton of deadlines on tax counseling/planning work (client needs you to get back to them within a couple of days, but if it takes you 3 days it's usually fine), and the work tends to be steady - not a ton of 250 hour months and 50 hour months, but a steady 160-200 in perpetuity. If the group is consistently too busy, it's time to bring in a new associate or a lateral. And the subject matter takes a while to learn, so by the time you're super helpful, you're a 4th or 5th year and firms don't want to fire you...but other firms *do* want to hire you. So that gives a bit more confidence to set boundaries where you need to - if you know you're instantly employable at any other firm, and your deadlines are mostly squishy, you can get some balance in your life (why stay up all night doing research when you can just do it tomorrow?).

Redrobbin2018

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Re: Why is the Tax group better?

Post by Redrobbin2018 » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:29 am

From a decades long DPW tax partner when I asked about the rumor that Tax and perhaps antitrust have better hours/work-life: "I doubt that there are any practicee areas in which hours are limited at a major firm. Someone who wants 9-5 should go into government."

That shut down that theory.

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Re: Why is the Tax group better?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:34 am

It depends. If you’re doing a lot of tax compliance work, you have a cushy job. But if you’re doing deal work, you’re just as busy as m&a.

Many large firms do not do only compliance work.

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Re: Why is the Tax group better?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Sep 17, 2018 12:07 pm

It’s not.

The learning curve is very, VERY steep. I’m sometimes sorry I didn’t get an LLM first. You work on all sorts of matters and some of the corporate teams on those matters will forget to loop you in and then ask you to review in 2-3 hours. Clients and coworkers will still send you emails at 11 pm or on Sunday morning or while you’re on vacation. That said, if you think you want to get more substantive experience early on, tax might be a good group for you.

I am a second year at a big firm in NYC. I like tax and most of the work I do, but I hate biglaw (unpredictability most of all, then hours).

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Re: Why is the Tax group better?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Sep 17, 2018 12:10 pm

As the adage goes:

Tax has the best work life balance. The trade-off is that you have to practice Tax.

didntretake

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Re: Why is the Tax group better?

Post by didntretake » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:09 pm

If you have some but not overhelming interest in tax and are also looking for a "specialist" group and that kind of lifestyle then you should consider employee benefits/exec comp, but the day to day practice across firms can vary greatly in terms of the types of matters you work on. And you will still likely do a lot of deal support.

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nealric

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Re: Why is the Tax group better?

Post by nealric » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:18 pm

Anonymous User wrote:As the adage goes:

Tax has the best work life balance. The trade-off is that you have to practice Tax.
I think that's actually a bonus. Tax is a lot more interesting than a lot of corporate work for an associate.

As far as better work-life balance: I do think I had it better as a tax associate than the corporate folks. While there were some tight deadlines, the work wasn't a constant cascade of tight deadlines. I usually had things I could start billing on first thing in the morning, while a lot of corporate associates had to wait around until the afternoon, then worked late into the night. When I was busy, it was usually consistent 14-16 hour days for many days on end. When the corporate folks were busy, they'd work 36 hours straight.

The other good thing about tax is you develop a specialized knowledge base that will help your marketability later. Also, a tax associate can go corporate a lot easier than the other way around. You pick up a lot of corporate stuff as a tax associate, but I find it rare that a corporate associate picks up much tax.

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Re: Why is the Tax group better?

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:25 pm

nealric wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:As the adage goes:

Tax has the best work life balance. The trade-off is that you have to practice Tax.
I think that's actually a bonus. Tax is a lot more interesting than a lot of corporate work for an associate.

As far as better work-life balance: I do think I had it better as a tax associate than the corporate folks. While there were some tight deadlines, the work wasn't a constant cascade of tight deadlines. I usually had things I could start billing on first thing in the morning, while a lot of corporate associates had to wait around until the afternoon, then worked late into the night. When I was busy, it was usually consistent 14-16 hour days for many days on end. When the corporate folks were busy, they'd work 36 hours straight.

The other good thing about tax is you develop a specialized knowledge base that will help your marketability later. Also, a tax associate can go corporate a lot easier than the other way around. You pick up a lot of corporate stuff as a tax associate, but I find it rare that a corporate associate picks up much tax.
I'm a current tax associate who agrees strongly with all of this. I would never consider switching to corporate (and the tax work I do is overwhelmingly deal focused not compliance). The people with tax experience in this thread are describing it accurately, the others not so much.

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nealric

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Re: Why is the Tax group better?

Post by nealric » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:35 pm

Redrobbin2018 wrote:From a decades long DPW tax partner when I asked about the rumor that Tax and perhaps antitrust have better hours/work-life: "I doubt that there are any practicee areas in which hours are limited at a major firm. Someone who wants 9-5 should go into government."

That shut down that theory.
That's a bit of a straw man. There's no question that Biglaw tax is nowhere near 9-5, but just because it's long hours doesn't mean it's not better than corporate. You'll bill the same hours, but you can likely bill a higher portion of the hours you are in the office and can have a greater degree of schedule predictability. The perspective of a partner may also be skewed, as corporate partners don't bear the brunt of schedule uncertainty in the same way associates do. A tax partner and corporate partner likely have fairly similar work/life balance.

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nealric

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Re: Why is the Tax group better?

Post by nealric » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:39 pm

Anonymous User wrote:It depends. If you’re doing a lot of tax compliance work, you have a cushy job. But if you’re doing deal work, you’re just as busy as m&a.

Many large firms do not do only compliance work.
Almost no biglaw firms do a significant amount of compliance work. They simply aren't set up for it, and can't justify the billing rates. To the extent biglaw firms do compliance work, it's minor forms like check-the-box elections to facilitate a deal. Nobody is cranking out returns in biglaw on any sort of regular basis- closest I ever did was a protective return for a foreign client who didn't want to retain a CPA firm in the U.S. in addition to a law firm.

Deal work is busy, but as explained above, it's not quite the same. It's not the tax associate who is sitting at the printer's office as the sun is coming up. The tax associate went home at midnight after the final nits in the tax indemnities were taken care of.

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