Switching from audit to tax? How to move into international tax

Applying for lots of vacancies with little to show for it is disheartening. Recruiters praise your CV, put you forward for jobs you could clearly do, and then you find out you haven’t even been selected for interview. It’s worth reiterating that this is not a reflection on you. Job markets move in cycles, and you happen to have qualified during a downturn in hiring for the industry roles auditors move into. You can’t change the timing, but you can take control of your next steps.

Start by recognising the knowledge and skills you’ve developed during your training contract. Your professional qualification is the core of it, recognised by employers everywhere. But 3+ years in audit builds far more than technical knowledge. You know how to walk into an unfamiliar business and work out how it operates. You have dealt with clients at every level, asked difficult questions of people far more senior than you, and analysed complex information to tight deadlines.

Unfortunately, there’s no escaping the reality of the current job market in the UK. If there are fifty or a hundred credible applicants for every role, the odds of leaving audit for industry are currently slim, however strong your CV. The question becomes how you make yourself stand out from the crowd.

You have choices. One is to stay in audit for a few more years. You would gain management experience, deal with more complex risks and be well placed when hiring picks up again. The other is to change direction, building on the knowledge and skills you already have in an area where they dovetail with demand in the market.

One option you may not have considered is developing your skills in international tax. If moving from audit into international tax sounds like too big a leap, bear with me. We have seen a recently qualified auditor make exactly this move, and later in this article I will share how she did it. First, though, it is worth understanding why employers are so keen to find tax people.

While you have been sending applications into a crowded market, tax recruiters in the UK have been dealing with the reverse. There are more roles than candidates to fill them.

The specialist tax recruitment firms publish salary guides and market reports each year, and the recent editions tell a consistent story. Brewer Morris reports that candidate supply for in-house tax roles is not keeping up with demand, with many positions newly created. Hays found the biggest salary increases across accountancy and finance last year were in taxation roles, driven partly by demand for skills linked to Pillar Two, a new global minimum tax. Harvey John reports a bottleneck at manager level, caused by reduced graduate hiring during the pandemic years, with demand now outstripping supply across professional services and in-house teams. Within international tax, the shortage is most acute in transfer pricing. Morgan McKinley's vacancy data showed transfer pricing roles growing faster than any other tax specialism last year, reflecting demand for cross-border expertise.

The shortage is not only about too few people. International tax work itself is growing, meaning an increasing number of firms are building their own international tax and transfer pricing teams for work once dominated by the Big 4. More businesses are also bringing tax expertise in-house, with recruiters reporting newly created roles and first-time Head of Tax appointments as companies build their own tax functions. More employers now need the same specialist skills, and they are all recruiting from the same small pool.

Most accountants' experience of tax comes from their university and accounting exams. You learned to prepare tax computations, check whether the conditions for a relief were met, and state the deadlines. Perhaps you have also reviewed corporation tax provisions for audit clients. It is natural to assume a career in tax means more of the same.

This isn’t what tax looks like in the roles we’re talking about here. Tax is complex, impacts on every part of a business, requires problem solving and great communication skills, and never stands still. If you take the right steps, you could position yourself for jobs with a strong advisory focus. In practice, this means working closely with clients to understand their businesses and where their tax risks lie. In industry, the best tax teams work right across the business, helping it grow and develop without running into tax risks along the way. A move in-house may not happen immediately, but international tax experience is in high demand in multinationals. The skills you have spent three years building in audit can carry you into this career.

For example, one area with strong demand is transfer pricing. Transfer pricing deals with how profits are shared between the companies in an international group. When one group company sells goods, provides services or lends money to another, the price affects where the group's profits arise and where tax is paid. The rules are there to ensure those prices reflect what independent businesses would have agreed. While arm’s length pricing sounds straightforward, it’s far from it in practice, making transfer pricing a challenging and interesting area of tax.

Good transfer pricing practitioners are experts in understanding businesses. They get to know how a business operates, what drives its value and where its risks sit, because every transfer pricing analysis is built on exactly this understanding. The rules themselves come from OECD guidelines, adopted in similar form around the world and open to interpretation, so the work involves forming a reasoned view and supporting it with evidence. Getting to know businesses in this way will help you in your career, whatever you go on to do.

How useful your audit experience could be is well illustrated by the newest area of international tax. Pillar Two is a global minimum tax agreed through the OECD, requiring large multinational groups to pay at least 15% tax in every country where they operate. The first filings, covering the 2024 year, were due by 30 June 2026. This compliance cycle will now repeat every year, with the returns for 2025 due by 31 March 2027.

Pillar Two calculations are built on consolidated financial statements, meaning the work demands a solid grasp of accounting standards, group consolidation and deferred tax. Deloitte describes the experience needed as deep accounting, auditing and controls experience. EY highlights the challenge of aligning group and local reporting and reconciling different accounting standards. This is a tax regime built on the things auditors know well, and tax teams everywhere are working out how to resource it. Transfer pricing teams in particular are taking on much of the Pillar Two workload, which is why they need people with a strong grounding in financial accounting and group reporting.

Tax technology is another area where your experience counts. Through audit work you have developed an understanding of clients' accounting systems and how to test their controls. In a recent survey of in-house tax leaders by The Consultancy Group, 61% said they struggle to find candidates with tax technology and automation knowledge. Automation is changing junior tax work too. Harvey John notes AI is becoming embedded in transfer pricing compliance work such as benchmarking and documentation, meaning the more routine tasks are increasingly automated and you reach the interesting work sooner.

Moving from audit into tax was once a well-trodden path of its own. Before specialist graduate tax intakes became the norm, it was common for auditors to move into other teams like tax or corporate finance after a few years. Look at the career paths of some of today's tax partners and you will find this is how they started.

At ExtraTax Training we teach international tax courses, and one of our students shows how you can move from audit into an international tax advisory role. She was an auditor with a Big 4 firm, recently qualified, with no tax knowledge beyond her exams. She decided international tax was where she wanted to build her career and backed herself to make it happen. In the spring she began studying for ADIT, the Advanced Diploma in International Taxation, a specialist qualification awarded by the Chartered Institute of Taxation. By the summer sitting she had passed two of the three exams she needed. Before the end of that year, and before she had even completed the qualification, she started a new role in international tax with a Big 4 firm.

Her third exam took two attempts, reflecting that ADIT is a demanding qualification. The average candidate is 35 and most have been working in tax for years, so passing any of these exams as a newcomer is an achievement. What her new employer saw was somebody with a strong professional foundation who had shown the initiative to go and learn international tax, proven she could pick up difficult concepts quickly, and passed exams sat alongside experienced tax specialists.

She chose to take a career break to study, which suited her circumstances. Most people making this move study alongside full time work instead, and later in this article we will look at what this involves.

The well-trodden path you set out on had a destination. For many, audit to industry, on to financial controller, then potentially finance director or CFO. A common worry about specialising is that it narrows your options and makes this trajectory less likely. Choose a specialism and you are stuck with it, or so the thinking goes. Tax has changed, though. Requirements like the Senior Accounting Officer regime and published tax strategies have put tax on the board's agenda. In-house tax teams are small, so you can find yourself working with senior leadership from an early stage.

Most tax careers are tied to one country, because the expertise is in that country's legislation. International tax and transfer pricing rules are built on internationally agreed frameworks developed through the OECD and UN, so the fundamentals you learn apply in London, Zurich, Dubai or Sydney. We have watched our own students' careers cross borders for exactly this reason.

Tax careers are mobile within businesses too. In-house tax teams work right across the business, from supply chains to systems projects, so a role in tax builds broad commercial knowledge. There are established routes onwards for those who want them, with moves from tax into treasury well recognised. And the top tax job keeps growing. The Head of Tax role now extends well beyond technical work into commercial strategy, with visibility at board level. Recruiters have begun publishing guides on moving from Head of Tax to CFO, which is becoming more common than it was ten or twenty years ago.

Career paths are changing anyway. Nobody knows exactly what leading a finance function will look like in ten years, but building skills across tax, accounting and technology will be valuable whatever it becomes. Moving into international tax means choosing a specialism; it doesn't mean pigeonholing yourself.

If you’ve recently completed your training contract, the thought of more exams may fill you with dread. You have spent three years sitting exams under pressure, knowing a failed paper could put your job at risk. You’ve probably sworn never to sit another exam!

Could you move into tax with your accounting qualification alone? Plenty of tax professionals hold nothing else, so it is possible. The difficulty is your lack of tax experience. Without it, the realistic first step is usually an internal move into a tax compliance role, and this can feel like a step back, as the graduates training in that team will know more about tax than you do at first. Studying international tax changes your position. It shows employers you can already work with the concepts, so you can aim for advisory focused roles instead, with no step back and potentially a higher salary.

If you choose to start studying again, there will be differences. You already hold your core qualification, so the pressure is off. This is something you choose to do for yourself. If you’re self funding, your employer has no involvement, no exam result can affect your job, and you don’t even have to tell anyone you’re studying again.

You do need to be realistic about the time. As you know, audit hours are long, with busy season making weeks disappear in a flash. An ADIT module that takes three to four months of study in theory may need to be spread over seven or eight months in practice. You won’t be getting study leave, so you may want to keep a week or so of annual leave for some study days before the exam. Plan your studies around your working pattern from the outset. Choose a course provider who understands where you are starting from, with a course design that helps you balance studying with a demanding job.

There will be some familiarity in the format of the exams too, as ADIT exams are based on case studies and written analysis. Studying a specialist qualification takes commitment and hard work. You will need to make sacrifices in the short-term, but it is an investment in yourself and your future career.

ADIT offers a quick and well-established route into transfer pricing. Awarded by the Chartered Institute of Taxation, the body behind the CTA qualification, it is the recognised international tax credential, held by tax professionals in countries around the world. The full qualification takes three exams, with Principles of International Taxation as the compulsory module and a choice of options alongside it. Exams are held twice a year.

You do not need to commit to the full qualification to get started. Each module can be studied on its own, and you can obtain a standalone certificate from the CIOT for a module you have passed. For someone in your position, this is the sensible first step. Three to four months of study, one exam, and you have a recognised certificate on your CV showing any future employer your intent, your initiative and your ability to learn international tax quickly. For example, if you register with the CIOT by the start of September, you could sit the Transfer Pricing exam in December and have your results in February. If you then decide to complete the full qualification, every module you pass is recognised along the way, and you may well find an employer willing to support you through the rest.

For an auditor, my advice is to start with the Transfer Pricing module. Its syllabus is manageable for someone new to international tax, and it is a practical subject, grounded in how businesses operate and where their risks sit, so your audit experience works in your favour from the first week of studying. Transfer pricing is also where employer demand is strongest.

You may be wondering why ADIT and not CTA, the qualification your colleagues in UK tax teams often hold. Both are excellent qualifications and the right choice depends on your plans. CTA develops expertise across the UK tax system. ADIT is built around international tax, with rules based on frameworks applied around the world, and its modular structure means your progress is recognised at every stage. If your interest is international, ADIT is the natural fit, and you can read a fuller comparison in our ADIT vs CTA blog.

If you would like to explore whether international tax could be the right move for you, here are some resources we would recommend.

• The CIOT's ADIT pages set out the qualification in full, including the syllabus for each module. This page sets out what the Transfer Pricing module covers.
• The r/CIOT community on Reddit has honest discussion about studying tax qualifications, and you can ask questions anonymously, which helps if you are exploring this without wanting to announce it.
• The specialist tax recruitment firms publish market reports and salary guides, several of which informed this article. Talking to a tax recruiter is also worthwhile, as they are best placed to tell you about demand in your location.
• Our blogs cover ADIT in more depth, including the ADIT vs CTA comparison.
• ADIT Professional Group on LinkedIn allows you to join a community of ADIT graduates and students. You can also follow me on LinkedIn for more on tax careers and developing international tax expertise