US Tax Practice Lead

Key Responsibilities:

1. Hands-On Technical Leadership:

• Personally review complex US federal and state tax returns and remain actively involved during peak filing periods.
• Act as the final internal escalation point for difficult technical tax matters.
• Provide technical guidance across Forms 1040, 1065, 1120, 1120-S, and 1041; related Schedules K-1; extensions; estimated-tax calculations; and state and multistate returns.
• Review book-to-tax adjustments, basis calculations, capital accounts, partnership allocations, depreciation, distributions, tax elections, Schedule M-1/M-3 reconciliations, and supporting workpapers.
• Research complex federal and state tax matters and document practical conclusions.
• Establish technical review standards, checklists, workpaper requirements, and quality-control procedures.

2. Delivery and Team Leadership:

• Lead supervisors, reviewers, and preparers.
• Allocate engagements based on technical complexity, staff capability, and capacity.
• Review high-risk returns and resolve technical, delivery, and client escalations.
• Monitor quality, turnaround time, utilisation, and filing deadlines.
• Coach reviewers and supervisors to strengthen technical judgement and review quality.
• Build future technical leads and participate in recruitment, technical interviews, performance evaluation, and succession planning.
• Work directly with the team during critical US tax-season deadlines.

3. Client and Engagement Ownership:

• Communicate directly with US CPA firms, tax leaders, and client stakeholders.
• Participate in engagement kick-offs, status meetings, technical discussions, and issue-resolution calls.
• Understand client portfolios, return complexity, software, documentation standards, workflow, and service expectations.
• Own the transition and stabilisation of new US tax engagements.
• Review engagement performance, address quality or delivery concerns, and build trusted client relationships.

4. New Business and Practice Growth:

• Participate in prospective-client discovery calls and technical capability discussions.
• Assess client portfolios, return types, complexity, volumes, timelines, staffing requirements, and delivery risks.
• Support proposal preparation, solution design, effort estimation, pricing inputs, staffing models, and transition planning.
• Present the organisations US tax capabilities and design pilot engagements.
• Support conversion of pilots into recurring work and identify account-expansion opportunities.
• Help develop additional services such as technical review, tax research, tax planning support, multistate compliance, and specialised return preparation.

5. Practice Building:

• Develop scalable processes while remaining connected to day-to-day technical delivery.
• Create technical training, review manuals, checklists, templates, and knowledge resources.
• Standardise quality and review processes across engagements.
• Support hiring and capability development for preparers, senior associates, reviewers, supervisors, and team leads.
• Work with leadership on capacity planning, compensation, pricing, profitability, and practice strategy.
• Build a culture of technical ownership, responsiveness, and accountability.

Required Experience:

• Minimum 10 years of relevant US taxation experience.
• Strong experience in the US tax outsourcing, offshoring, KPO, or CPA-firm support industry.
• Significant hands-on preparation and review experience across individual and business tax returns.
• Current or recent responsibility for personally reviewing technically complex returns.
• Strong technical knowledge of Forms 1040, 1065, 1120, and 1120-S.
• Working knowledge of Form 1041, Schedule K-1 reporting, state returns, extensions, and estimated-tax calculations.
• Experience with CCH Axcess, GoSystem, UltraTax, Lacerte, Drake, ProSeries, or comparable tax software.
• Experience reviewing complex partnership and corporate tax workpapers.
• Experience leading team leads, supervisors, reviewers, senior associates, and preparers.
• Direct experience communicating with US clients or CPA firms.
• Experience supporting client transitions, proposals, pilot assignments, solutioning, or account expansion.
• Strong written and verbal English communication skills.
• Ability to balance technical review, team leadership, client communication, and commercial priorities.

Work Arrangement:

• Ahmedabad location only.
• Hybrid model with mandatory and regular attendance at the Ahmedabad office.
• This is not a remote role; candidates outside Ahmedabad must be willing to relocate.
• Flexibility during the US tax season is mandatory.
• The role may require extended hours, adjusted shifts, US working-hour overlap, and occasional weekend work during peak periods.