I do find it 'interesting' that typical salary bandings for UK Indirect Tax Managers in professional services have only crept up by £5k in the last 20 years (and most of that increase came in the 2022 bounce!).
Are firms not paying what they should for people at this level? Are they doing enough to counter the lure of a move in-house when people get to this grade (and yes, in-house packages at this grade tend to be pretty attractive on the financials)?
Is it simply okay for firms to blame the turgid state of the UK economy over the last few decades? I'm not convinced....firms always talk about having continued growth and profits, but somehow the benefit never seems to trickle down to improve static salary bandings.
A promotion to Manager grade (and the spending power that came with that) used to mean the world to Indirect Tax professionals as they grew their careers. I reckon it's much harder to get as excited about working towards this goal when the cost of living means continued struggles to make ends meet at the Manager milestone. Does that impact on retention and attraction, not just in Indirect Tax, but across the whole professional services world?
I wonder whether that's one of the reasons why the bulk of hiring in professional services is firmly fixated at the Manager grade...that current employees aren't as motivated to get there? Or haven't been tempted to enter the discipline initially as there's better paying careers elsewhere?
Food for thought...maybe BLT's Indirect Tax Salary Survey/Market Report that's due in January might reveal a big jump in salary bandings to counter the increased living costs - but I suspect we all know that's unlikely.....
I do think that the professional services firms need to fix this - if employees don't feel secure financially when they're reaching the mid-point of their professional careers, then surely it's going to have an impact on the quality of people looking to embark on careers with the accountancy firms in the first place - and that will be true whether in tax, audit or their other service lines.
- Guy Barrand