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Ask a tax partner, and they’ll likely say practice. Ask a Head of Tax, and they’ll probably say industry. Ask a tax recruiter and talent advisor?
My answer is: it depends!
The right choice comes down to you, your personality, your interests and what matters most to you in your career.
While it is ultimately a very personal decision, there are a number of objective factors worth considering that can help you decide whether practice or industry is likely to be the better fit.
Business environment – Key business service Vs support service
In professional practice, tax is viewed as a core business service because your work directly contributes to the firm’s revenue. By contrast, within industry, tax is generally considered a support function. While the work of the tax team can significantly impact profitability, it does not directly generate income for the business.
This creates a fundamental change in environment. In practice, you may be part of a 200-person tax department responsible for generating half of the firm’s revenue. In industry, however, you might join a four-person tax team whose primary role is to manage tax risk while enabling the wider business to grow and remain profitable.
That said, finance and tax functions in industry are increasingly evolving from traditional support roles into business-partnering functions. As a result, tax teams have become more integrated into decision-making and more influential across the business.
There is also a cultural shift. Coming from practice, you are likely used to working alongside similar professionals in a collegiate, professional-services environment. In industry, you become part of a broader commercial organisation, where tax is viewed through a different lens. Moving from professional services into the corporate sector, therefore, brings a noticeably different culture and way of working.
Type of work – Client-facing Vs non-client-facing
Both practice and industry can offer a wide variety of work, but the nature of that work differs, primarily because practice is client-facing, while industry is not.
As a tax advisor in practice, your daily tasks are largely driven by client needs. Your focus is on delivering technically accurate and robust solutions, advising clients on complex tax matters, and helping manage and develop client relationships. In larger firms, you are likely to become more specialised, focusing on a particular area of tax or an industry sector. As your career progresses, you may move towards tax planning and consultancy work, gradually stepping away from compliance tasks, although this varies depending on the team and firm.
In contrast, as an in-house tax advisor, your role centres on identifying and managing tax risks for the business and coordinating with external advisors on technical issues. This work can span multiple taxes and jurisdictions, giving your role a broader scope. Depending on the company’s compliance model, your responsibilities may lean more heavily toward tax reporting, compliance, and process improvement.
Other factors that influence your work in industry include the company’s reliance on external advisors, available budget, the level of M&A or transactional activity, the corporate structure, and where key decisions are made. These elements shape the type of work you’ll handle.
While you won’t face “challenging clients” in the traditional sense, stakeholder management will be critical as you will be expected to build and manage relationships across cross-functional teams, supporting the business and ensuring tax considerations are appropriately integrated into decision-making.
Culture
Every organisation has its own unique culture, whether in a practice or industry setting.
What shapes culture? In my view, it’s the small, everyday actions of the people who work there. Because of this, it’s impossible to say that one environment—practice or industry—has a “better” culture. It all comes down to the individuals within the organisation and how they behave day to day.
The best way to assess whether you would be a good cultural fit is to engage with the people who work there. Even something as simple as the impression you get when walking into reception can provide a sense of the working environment. Ideally, this positive impression continues as you meet and interact with staff throughout the recruitment process.
Future career paths
If you remain in practice, your career progression will typically stay within tax. A move to industry may open doors to broader finance, commercial, or strategic roles, and could provide opportunities to move beyond tax altogether.
Careers in practice, especially in larger firms, tend to be more structured, with clear and transparent pathways. Promotions to manager, senior manager, director, and beyond are often well-defined and achievable if you stay on track.
In industry, promotional pathways for tax professionals may be less formal, but opportunities for learning, development, and career growth still exist. Moreover, as the importance of tax continues to rise globally, many organisations have expanded their in-house tax teams, creating additional roles and exceptional opportunities for career progression.
Work-life balance
It’s worth highlighting one of the most commonly discussed differences between practice and industry for tax professionals: work-life balance.
Does industry offer a better balance? The answer is: it depends.
In practice, the client-facing environment means you are expected to deliver according to your clients’ needs, often under tight deadlines. However, the corporate sector also has “clients” in the form of internal stakeholders and investors, where urgent deadlines can arise unexpectedly. Ultimately, it often comes down to who controls the workload.
Senior tax professionals in practice typically reach a stage where they can manage and prioritise their workload, and the same is true for tax teams in industry—especially when decision-making is based in Ireland or Europe.
Salaries & Benefits – There are clear differences in salaries and benefits when comparing practice and industry opportunities for tax professionals. We’ll explore this in more detail in an upcoming feature on salary insights, so stay tuned.
Final note: If you decide to move to industry, when should you move?
My advice is that, unless you are certain you want to leave practice or tax (for whatever reasons), make the move to industry once you can. That said, gaining post-qualification experience in practice is valuable – it helps you develop your technical tax expertise and clarify the areas of tax that most interest you.
It is possible to make the move from practice to industry at almost any stage up to manager, senior manager, director or even partner. However, as you progress, the number of opportunities decreases, competition increases and prior industry experience is often expected for senior positions.
Take the time to carefully consider your options. Your priorities now may shift over time, so it’s important to continually reassess and ensure your career moves align with your long-term goals.
If you want to have a 1:1 confidential conversation about your tax or treasury career, contact Kate Flanagan at kate.flanagan@barden.ie, Aoibhín Byrne at aoibhin.byrne@barden.ie, or Aideen Murphy at aideen.murphy@barden.ie.