Innovation Reliefs & Incentives Assistant Manager

Job description

KPMG’s national Innovation Reliefs and Incentives team (“IRI”) is part of our wider Corporate Tax department, where staff work with clients to help them claim tax incentives for innovation and the creative sector. Our staff have the opportunity to develop relationships with clients, to help them claim corporation tax relief or credits for research & development, exploiting patents and producing creative content from video games through to TV programmes. This involves working with clients to produce complex tax claims, computations and documentation for HM Revenue & Customs and giving advice on the effect of the incentives on wider business considerations such as managing effective tax rate, structuring or where to locate research and development activities.

The R&D team is looking to expand with the appointment of a Tax Assistant Manager in the team based in London. R&D Tax Relief provides an incentive to UK businesses carrying out qualifying R&D activity. The team works with businesses from almost every sector of the economy to identify their qualifying R&D activity, quantify it and obtain the R&D incentive relief for them, as well as working with clients to best leverage the Patent Box regime.

Roles and Responsibilities

This Assistant Manager level role is for a scientist, engineer or IT specialist to work with the local incentives personnel to accelerate the growth of our business in this region. You will be required to use your knowledge and experience to help our clients in making claims for R&D Tax relief, as well as Patent Box claims.

You will also be required to:

• Work with the engagement team to develop claim methodologies and prepare R&D tax relief claims and Patent Box claims for submission to HMRC
• Manage overall client engagement, including liaison with KPMG and client staff)
• Work with HMRC specialists to facilitate the agreement of R&D and Patent Box claims
• Advise client technical specialist on the application of the R&D guidelines to their work
• Build an internal network within the wider tax practice of the firm
• Help to establish and maintain strong client relationships with both existing and new clients
• Work with the KPMG finance and tax specialists to ensure that eligible R&D Tax expenditure and Patent income is correctly identified.
• Lead in progressing business development opportunities and to pitch for work with both new and existing clients.

Qualifications and Skills

• Science or technical degree to 2.1 level
• Excellent communication skills in a range of situations with internal team members and senior staff at the client. In particular having an ability to explain complex technical concepts in simple language
• The ability to deal with technical and finance staff on a one to one to basis, conducting structured discussions.
• Capable of producing documentation to a high level of quality for submission to HMRC
• Ability to guide and provide constructive guidance to junior grades to deliver high quality work to the client/HMRC and as part of their career development.
• Very good project management skills and an ability to manage own workload, as well as junior members of the team.
• Excellent problem solving skills
• Team player

Experience and Background

• Experience of working in industrial product or process development
• Project management experience
• Experience with preparing documentation for non-specialists
• Wider interest in R&D and technology development