The primary role of a tax accountant is to help clients and companies with their financial and income tax statements. He/She prepares payments, identifies tax savings, and analyzes tax issues. He/She evaluates and verifies tax forms filled by clients to ensure accurate completion. Furthermore, he/she consults with clients to gather personal information on potential deductions, educational grants, or allowances. Additionally, he/she reviews financial statements, expenses, and previous tax returns to identify how best to complete future returns. Also, he/she analyzes tax regulations and recommends policies that reduce the tax burden.
Most tax accountants hold at least a bachelor's degree in accounting or a related discipline. Applicants are required to have at least three years of experience in a similar role. Having a certified public accountant license is a plus. You must possess analytical, attention to detail, communication, and math skills. Tax accountants earn an average salary of $63,809 per annum. This ranges between $45,000 and $91,000.
How to Become a Tax Accountant
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a tax accountant. For example, did you know that they make an average of $29.36 an hour? That's $61,060 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 6% and produce 90,700 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Tax Accountant Do
There are certain skills that many tax accountants have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed computer skills, interpersonal skills and analytical skills.
How To Become a Tax Accountant
If you're interested in becoming a tax accountant, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 72.0% of tax accountants have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 15.9% of tax accountants have master's degrees. Even though most tax accountants have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a tax accountant. When we researched the most common majors for a tax accountant, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on tax accountant resumes include associate degree degrees or high school diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a tax accountant. In fact, many tax accountant jobs require experience in a role such as staff accountant. Meanwhile, many tax accountants also have previous career experience in roles such as accountant or senior accountant.
Tax Accountant Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of senior accountant you might progress to a role such as accounting manager eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title regional controller.
Average Salary for a Tax Accountant
What Am I Worth?
Top Colleges for Tax Accountants
1. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
2. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
3. University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA • Private
4. SUNY at Binghamton
Vestal, NY • Private
5. Villanova University
Villanova, PA • Private
6. San Diego State University
San Diego, CA • Private
7. Bentley University
Waltham, MA • Private
8. SUNY Farmingdale
Farmingdale, NY • Private
9. Boston University
Boston, MA • Private
10. SUNY Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY • Private
Top Skills For a Tax Accountant
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 53.3% of tax accountants listed tax returns on their resume, but soft skills such as computer skills and interpersonal skills are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Tax Accountant Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Tax Accountant templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Tax Accountant resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Tax Accountant Demographics
Tax Accountant Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among tax accountants, 52.7% of them are women, while 47.3% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among tax accountants is White, which makes up 64.9% of all tax accountants.
- The most common foreign language among tax accountants is Spanish at 32.3%.
Online Courses For Tax Accountant That You May Like
Payroll calculations - federal income tax, social security, Medicare - Payroll journal entries posted to ledger accounts...
Subsidiary ledgers for accounts receivable & accounts payable. Special Journals - Sales journal, purchases journal...
Adjusting entry creation, posting adjusting entries to a worksheet, creating financial statements from the trial balance...
Best States For a Tax Accountant
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a tax accountant. The best states for people in this position are New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Connecticut. Tax accountants make the most in New York with an average salary of $76,011. Whereas in New Jersey and Virginia, they would average $72,584 and $69,521, respectively. While tax accountants would only make an average of $68,654 in Connecticut, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. District of Columbia
$81,608
Avg. Salary
2. Connecticut
$68,654
Avg. Salary
3. New Jersey
$72,584
Avg. Salary
How Do Tax Accountant Rate Their Jobs?
Top Tax Accountant Employers
Most Common Employers For Tax Accountant
| Rank  | Company  | Average Salary  | Hourly Rate  | Job Openings  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ernst & Young | $91,645 | $44.06 | 114 |
| 2 | Pwc | $89,676 | $43.11 | 30 |
| 3 | Grant Thornton | $89,067 | $42.82 | 21 |
| 4 | KPMG LLP | $77,493 | $37.26 | 30 |
| 5 | Oracle | $72,911 | $35.05 | 16 |
| 6 | CyberCoders | $62,071 | $29.84 | 27 |
| 7 | The Coca-Cola Company | $61,350 | $29.50 | 21 |
| 8 | Schlumberger | $61,124 | $29.39 | 25 |
| 9 | SS&C Technologies | $61,007 | $29.33 | 19 |
| 10 | U.S. Bank | $60,505 | $29.09 | 31 |
Tax Accountant Videos
