Senior Tax Accountant

Job Description

Job Description:\n\nAbout ETS:\nETS is a global education and talent solutions organization enabling lifelong learners worldwide to be future-ready. For more than 75 years, we've been advancing the science of measurement to build benchmarks for fair and valid skill assessment across cultures and borders. Our worldwide impact extends through our renowned assessments including TOEFL®, TOEIC®, GRE® and Praxis® tests, serving millions of learners in more than 200 countries and territories. Through strategic acquisitions, we've expanded our global capabilities: PSI strengthens our workforce assessment solutions, while Edusoft, Kira Talent, Pipplet, Vericant, and Wheebox enhance our educational technology and assessment platforms across critical markets worldwide.\nThrough ETS Research Institute and ETS Solutions, we're partnering with educational institutions, governments, and organizations globally to promote skill proficiency, empower upward mobility, and unlock opportunities for everyone, everywhere. With offices and partners across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, we deliver nearly 50 million tests annually. Join us in our journey of measuring progress to power human progress worldwide.\n \nThe Senior Tax Accountant supports the Enterprise Tax Service Group in completing monthly, quarterly, and year-end tax reporting and compliance requirements across ETS’s taxable and tax-exempt entities. The position is the primary support for U.S. indirect tax filings and is the tax function’s day-to-day coordination point with the India Global Capability Center (“GCC”) team on Vertex and the changes affecting U.S. indirect taxes.\nAcross income tax, exempt-organization, indirect tax, provision, controversy, and research work, the Tax Accountant Sr. prepares and the Tax Manager reviews and approves. The position does not set positions, approve filings, or hold final authority; it is expected to deliver work complete, documented, and reconciled so that review is efficient, and to surface issues early.\nThe role works day to day with the India GCC team, SBU and Corporate Finance, Accounting Operations, Treasury, Procurement, and Information Technology to obtain data, validate system changes, and understand transactions, and handles routine information requests with external advisors and co-sourcing providers under the Tax Manager’s direction.\nKey Responsibilities\n\nServe as the primary support for U.S. indirect tax filings — sales and use, gross receipts, and excise. Prepare returns, reconciliations, and liability account roll-forwards; maintain exemption and resale certificates, registrations, and nexus tracking; and resolve routine filing and payment issues, escalating exceptions to the Tax Manager.\nCoordinate with the India GCC team on Vertex as it relates to U.S. indirect taxes. Intake and validate monthly rate and rule content updates, prepare and submit rate change specifications, review taxability mapping Changes, and work with Vertex Leader in India to facilitate and test these changes. Changes are submitted to the Vertex Leader in India for approval before they reach production.\nWork with Vertex Leader in India to maintain the Vertex change record for U.S. indirect tax — what changed, who requested it, what testing was performed, and the approval obtained — and validate determination output against source transactions on a recurring basis, investigating variances with the India GCC team and Information Technology and escalating any filing or exposure risk to the Tax Manager.\nSupport federal, state, and local income and franchise tax compliance for ETS’s taxable subsidiaries. Prepare returns, apportionment schedules, estimated payments, extensions, and supporting workpapers for Tax Manager review.\nSupport exempt-organization compliance for the parent and affiliated exempt entities. Prepare Forms 990, 990-T with a separate Schedule A for each unrelated trade or business under Section 512(a)(6), and state charitable registration and UBIT filings, including required disclosures, attachments, and supporting schedules.\nSupport the annual and interim income tax provision under ASC 740. Prepare current and deferred computations, deferred tax inventory roll-forwards, income tax rate reconciliation and income-taxes-paid and payable reconciliation and support for external auditor review.\nSupport the preparation of tax accruals, budgets, forecasts, and cash tax projections, and prepare the tax account reconciliations and roll-forwards on which they depend.\nSupport responses to IRS, state, and local tax authority notices, information document requests, and audits — including sales and use tax audits and the sampling and transaction detail they require. Gather and organize the data and draft responses for Tax Manager review.\nPerform tax research on assigned indirect, federal, state, and exempt-organization questions and draft technical memoranda documenting the analysis and authoritative support. Recommendations are submitted to the Tax Manager, who determines the position taken.\nTrack federal, state, exempt-organization, and indirect tax legislative and regulatory developments, and summarize the potential impact on ETS for the Tax Manager.\nPrepare information reporting filings (Forms 1099 and 1042-S), property tax, and unclaimed property filings, and assist with foreign information returns and transfer pricing documentation.\nMaintain the compliance calendar and filing status tracking across all return types, keep process documentation and review evidence current, and escalate any risk to a filing deadline early.\nSupport automation and process improvement. Build and maintain repeatable data pipelines, reconciliations, and recurring reporting using AI and analytics tooling, and identify recurring tasks that are candidates for automation or for transition to the India GCC team.\nHandle routine data requests and deliverable timing with external advisors and co-sourcing providers, and partner with Finance and business teams to obtain source data and understand transactions and new offerings.\n\nTax Technology, Data, and Automation\n\nThe position is expected to work hands-on in the tools below, to be the group’s day-to-day user of its tax systems and data, and to collaborate with the ETSG team in India and Europe on global projects. Configuration changes are prepared and tested by this position and approved by the Tax Manager.\nVertex — U.S. indirect tax: maintain taxability mapping and jurisdiction and rate content for U.S. sales and use tax; prepare and validate configuration changes; perform regression and user acceptance testing for rate, rule, and system changes; and validate determination output against source transactions.\nVertex — coordination with the India GCC team: translate a tax requirement into a written change specification, review the work returned, test it, document the outcome, and manage the daily handoff across time zones so that no change is submitted for approval untested.\nIncome tax provision and compliance software: maintain entity and jurisdiction structures, provision templates, and return workpapers; support the provision-to-return process.\nData preparation and analytics: build and maintain repeatable data pipelines and reconciliations using AI technology.\nEnterprise systems: extract and reconcile tax-relevant data from ERP, procurement, expense, and billing systems, and support testing when those systems change.\nArtificial intelligence: use ETS-approved generative and agentic AI tools to accelerate tax research, first-draft memoranda, document and contract data extraction, and anomaly detection on provision and transaction data. All AI-assisted output must be independently verified against authoritative source material, retain citations sufficient to support a defensible position, and be reviewed before use. Adhere to ETS information security, data classification, and AI governance policies; confidential or personally identifiable data may not be entered into tools not approved for it.\n\nProcess Outputs and Deliverables\n\nU.S. sales and use, gross receipts, and excise returns, reconciliations, and liability roll-forwards\nVertex change specifications, test evidence, and the U.S. indirect tax change log\nExemption and resale certificate records; registration and nexus tracking\nFederal income tax return workpapers; state and local income and franchise returns; estimates and extensions\nForms 990 and 990-T with per-activity Schedule A support; state charitable registration and UBIT filings\nASC 740 provision workpapers, deferred tax roll-forwards, and ASU 2023-09 disclosure support\nTax account reconciliations; accrual, budget, forecast, and cash tax support\nResearch files and draft technical memoranda\nDraft notice and audit response packages, including sales and use tax audit support\nInformation reporting, property tax, and unclaimed property filings; foreign information return and transfer pricing support\nCompliance calendar and filing status reporting; ad hoc analysis and data requests\n\nPeople Management\nThis position has no direct report responsibility and is not a management-track role.The position does carry coordination responsibility without authority. It directs the day-to-day Vertex work of the India GCC team through written specifications, review, and testing, and is responsible for the completeness and accuracy of what it submits onward — but the Tax Manager retains approval authority over that work and remains accountable for the outcome. Where the GCC team’s output is late, incomplete, or incorrect, the expectation is that this position raises it to the Tax Manager rather than renegotiating scope or priorities directly.The incumbent is expected to provide informal guidance to analysts and interns supporting the Enterprise Tax Service Group, to document processes clearly enough that another preparer can follow them, and to build the technical and technology capability required to progress toward a manager-level role.\nPosition Specifications — Other Requirements\n\nAbility to write a clear, unambiguous change specification and to test what comes back rather than assume it is correct.\nAbility to work effectively with a remote team across time zones, including planning work so that handoffs do not create idle days.\nAbility to work with both for-profit and not-for-profit tax rules and to ask which framework applies when it is not obvious.\nStrong written and oral communication skills, with the ability to explain a computation, a system behavior, or a data request clearly to non-tax colleagues.\nStrong analytical and quantitative skills, attention to detail, and the discipline to reconcile before submitting work for review.\nAbility to prioritize across a multi-entity, multi-jurisdictional compliance calendar and to raise conflicts early rather than absorb them.\nJudgment about what to escalate and what to resolve independently, and willingness to escalate rather than assume authority the position does not hold.\nWillingness to take direction and rework, and to use review comments to build technical depth.\nSound professional judgment regarding the appropriate use, verification, and documentation of AI-assisted work product.\nCommitment to ETS’s data privacy, information security, and records retention obligations.\n Competency: Expected Level\n\nFunctional & Technical Acumen Expertise: able to do and explain the work independently within the specific domain, and to recognize when a matter requires the Tax Manager’s judgment.\nTechnology & Data Fluency Expertise: uses tax technology, data preparation, analytics, and AI tooling hands-on to execute and improve recurring tax processes.\nEnd to End ETS Understanding Proficiency: understands how the position’s work connects to the broader tax function and to the business units it supports.\nResults Orientation Expertise: plans and sequences work to meet committed deadlines, and raises obstacles early enough to be resolved.\nMarket Insight & Service Orientation Proficiency: responds to internal stakeholder needs accurately and on time, and anticipates recurring requests.\nLearning Agility Expertise: learns from review comments and new assignments, and applies that learning to subsequent work without repetition of error.\nRelationship Mastery / People Skills Proficiency: works effectively across the tax function, Finance, and external providers.\nCross-Matrix & Global Coordination Expertise: coordinates and tests work performed by a remote global capability center team through written specification, review, and testing; manages handoffs across time zones; escalates quality and timeliness issues to the Tax Manager.\n\nPosition Specifications — Education and ExperienceCandidates with experience spanning both taxable and tax-exempt entities are preferred. Candidates with depth on one side and demonstrated ability to learn the other will be considered.\n\nRequired: B.S. degree in Accounting, Tax, or Finance.\nPreferred: CPA, or active progress toward the CPA, J.D., or M.S.T.\nRequired: three to six years of practical corporate tax experience in industry, public accounting, or a combination.\nRequired: hands-on U.S. sales and use tax compliance experience, including return preparation, taxability determination, exemption certificate management, and nexus and registration maintenance.\nRequired: hands-on Vertex experience, including validating determination output and specifying or testing configuration changes.\nRequired: federal and state corporate income and franchise tax return preparation experience, including workpaper preparation and apportionment.\nRequired: working knowledge of ASC 740 and experience preparing provision workpapers.\nRequired: demonstrated ability to prepare reconciliations and supporting documentation in a controlled, reviewable format.\nPreferred: experience working with an offshore global capability center, shared services center, or co-sourcing team, including writing specifications and managing remote handoffs.\nPreferred: exempt-organization tax experience, including Forms 990 and 990-T and unrelated business income analysis under Section 512(a)(6).\nPreferred: experience supporting sales and use tax audits, including sampling and transaction detail production.\nPreferred: experience responding to state and local tax notices.\nPreferred: experience with information reporting, property tax, or unclaimed property.\nPreferred: a demonstrable record of improving or automating a recurring tax process.\n\nPosition Specifications — Technology and SystemsCandidates are not expected to have used every platform listed. The requirement is hands-on experience with at least one tool in each required category and the demonstrated ability to learn adjacent platforms\n\nCategory\n\nRequired\n\nPreferred\n\nIncome tax compliance\n\nA corporate compliance platform — Corptax, Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE Income Tax, or CCH Axcess\n\nMulti-state combined and unitary filing experience\n\nOffshore coordination