Indirect Tax Transformation Review

Indirect tax transformation is about helping clients change with the times. This currently involves helping clients change their operating model to an automated system to fulfil the making tax digital requirements. On a day-to-day basis, I have worked on several projects, but most notably, i have been working on a program that is going to take 15 million lines of VAT transactional data from a company and process it to output analytical data that they can use to make decisions.

I started the internship with almost no knowledge of taxes and no knowledge of any of the technology that is used. Throughout the month, I have received training in the systems, learning how to operate it myself and have been given the chance to get involved with actual client work. It has also been a good opportunity to develop existing skills such as client presentation, where in a group of 3, we gave a mock client presentation to our managers, simulating a real client meeting.

I have been given responsibility for multiple pieces of client work and internal work. Most notably, I worked with one other person on producing the program to process client data. I have also helped prepare a presentation that was given to a client, with specific responsibility for producing the workflow that was presented, showing our solution to their issue. I was given the run down of how it would work and was told to make it myself and put it straight into the presentation.

The support i have received has been exceptional. Everyone in my team has taken the time to sit down and explain what they do and how i can help them, despite this process taking much longer than if they were to do it themselves. This especially includes the multiple hours of one-to-one training i was given on how to use the software at the beginning, which meant the rest of my time here was much more interesting.

The team is really good fun and everyone seems to get along really well. Everyone collaborates a lot, constantly asking each other questions which creates a really nice team-feel and it made it less daunting when i had questions to ask, as the environment was very open to learning. The company culture also seems open, with everyone working as part of the team and not for themselves and this spread to the interns, with us all working together and helping each other out.

I have really enjoyed the month i have been working here. My team is usually in the office Tuesday-Thursday but I have come in most days and been with the other interns whom i have also enjoyed socialising with and getting to know. The work has also been really interesting and i have particularly enjoyed being able to help with actual client work and seeing what my service line does, as at the beginning i didn't have any idea.

Yes

I would say the technical side doesn't really matter, as you can always be trained to specialise in a certain area. This means the most important bit is the way you present yourself and how quickly you can pick up new skills. For the application process, once you've passed the assessment tests, for the video interview i would recommend taking some time to think about what sort of person you are and then using that as the basis for your answers in how you would handle certain situations.