Deloitte, PwC, or E&Y for Accounting Tax?

Hello WSO,

I am currently a college student deciding on where to intern as an accountancy major who wants to specify in tax in the Chicago office. I got internship offers from Deloitte, PwC, and E&Y for tax. In terms of E&Y, they wanted me in their famous FSO department while PwC and Deloitte was general tax internships. I was wondering if you could possibly give me some of your insight regarding where would be the best place to go if I want to stay in public accountancy for 10 years or even to reach partner as well as the field of tax I should go in? Also, I heard that PwC gives the most job training, but it pays the least and takes the longest to get promoted? Could you possibly confirm on that and would it be worth it to stay with PwC for the training? Lastly, I was wondering if you could answer some possible good exit strategies from tax?

Thanks,

HJ

 
Best Response

Take the training thing with a grain of salt. They all provide 2 weeks of general training before you are assigned a group and its not that special. FYI audit fees are higher than tax fees. Those partners make more and barely any of them have anything more than a CPA and an undergrad degree. You'll find tax partners with CPA, JD, LLM. Where you intern doesn't matter too much although some firms might consider your months as an intern towards your career and promotions going forward. I think PWC might do that but I'm not positive. I believe PWC pays the most but takes the longest to make senior associate - but you make manager quicker. It really doesn't fucking matter at all. They have the market cornered and everything is relatively similar. If you land an internship with any of the big 4 the other 3 will hire you full-time when you graduate. What you need to do is figure out where you want to live once you graduate and pick the firm from there. If you want NYC and you want Tax you want Deloitte. If you want Chicago it could be different. If I were you, and if I wanted to be a tax guy, I would work at a regional firm and basically have them pay you to learn how to run your own tax shop. Once you open your own place you get tax benefits (I'll let you figure those out for homework) and the sky is the limit. Tax and accounting might not be glamorous but once you're your own boss with your own clients you can make as much as you can pull in. Don't need to keep your head in the trough - you keep what you kill. Remember, the most expensive apartment in manhattan was purchased by a guy who sells shit for a living.

 
Cookies With Milken:
Take the training thing with a grain of salt. They all provide 2 weeks of general training before you are assigned a group and its not that special. FYI audit fees are higher than tax fees. Those partners make more and barely any of them have anything more than a CPA and an undergrad degree. You'll find tax partners with CPA, JD, LLM. Where you intern doesn't matter too much although some firms might consider your months as an intern towards your career and promotions going forward. I think PWC might do that but I'm not positive. I believe PWC pays the most but takes the longest to make senior associate - but you make manager quicker. It really doesn't fucking matter at all. They have the market cornered and everything is relatively similar. If you land an internship with any of the big 4 the other 3 will hire you full-time when you graduate. What you need to do is figure out where you want to live once you graduate and pick the firm from there. If you want NYC and you want Tax you want Deloitte. If you want Chicago it could be different. If I were you, and if I wanted to be a tax guy, I would work at a regional firm and basically have them pay you to learn how to run your own tax shop. Once you open your own place you get tax benefits (I'll let you figure those out for homework) and the sky is the limit. Tax and accounting might not be glamorous but once you're your own boss with your own clients you can make as much as you can pull in. Don't need to keep your head in the trough - you keep what you kill. Remember, the most expensive apartment in manhattan was purchased by a guy who sells shit for a living.

Well I know for sure that Deloitte has a better tax department than PwC or E&Y. Does it truly matter who has the greater market share in a certain industry even though they are all considered the "Big 4." In Chicago anyways, E&Y actually pays the highest though. PwC just constantly bragged about how their training program was the best, so I was just curious.

Thanks so much for the feedback/advice!

 
Cookies With Milken:
If I were you, and if I wanted to be a tax guy, I would work at a regional firm and basically have them pay you to learn how to run your own tax shop. Once you open your own place you get tax benefits (I'll let you figure those out for homework) and the sky is the limit. Tax and accounting might not be glamorous but once you're your own boss with your own clients you can make as much as you can pull in. Don't need to keep your head in the trough - you keep what you kill. Remember, the most expensive apartment in manhattan was purchased by a guy who sells shit for a living.

Could not have said it better myself ^

Go Regional/Local for a few years and learn as much as you can about 1040/1120 prep and other misc items, then open up your own shop and pull in 100K+ working 30 hours a week during non-busy season, assuming you are not socially inept and can have clients like you.

 
Ruskii:
Cookies With Milken:
If I were you, and if I wanted to be a tax guy, I would work at a regional firm and basically have them pay you to learn how to run your own tax shop. Once you open your own place you get tax benefits (I'll let you figure those out for homework) and the sky is the limit. Tax and accounting might not be glamorous but once you're your own boss with your own clients you can make as much as you can pull in. Don't need to keep your head in the trough - you keep what you kill. Remember, the most expensive apartment in manhattan was purchased by a guy who sells shit for a living.

Could not have said it better myself ^

Go Regional/Local for a few years and learn as much as you can about 1040/1120 prep and other misc items, then open up your own shop and pull in 100K+ working 30 hours a week during non-busy season, assuming you are not socially inept and can have clients like you.

Not to thread jack, but opening up my own place is something I definitely plan to consider, but I wanna take the Big 4 audit route in case I do wanna do the corporate thing long term. Will I learn a damn thing about how to run my own Tax and Accounting practice or not in the least?

 

Just go to the one that's strongest in your region OP. Typically, outside perception is Deloitte/PwC > Ernst > KPMG, but in my home city, all the top kids want to go to KPMG because they clean up in that particular city. They're all virtually the same, so check out which ones work with the clients you'll want to work on and go to that office.

 
Accrual Dictator:
Just go to the one that's strongest in your region OP. Typically, outside perception is Deloitte/PwC > Ernst > KPMG, but in my home city, all the top kids want to go to KPMG because they clean up in that particular city. They're all virtually the same, so check out which ones work with the clients you'll want to work on and go to that office.

Do you possibly have any recommendations for places to look at that would give information regarding strength in a certain region? Like I know for tax overall Deloitte is strongest in Chicago, but I was wondering does strength and marketshare really matter?

 

I can't say anything about tax unfortunately. I know for audit the best way to look it up is to google F500s or other public companies in your area (in your case Chicago/Illinois) and then check their 10-K to see who audits them. Tax and audit, if I'm not mistaken, can't audit the same clients due to conflict of interest or something, so I'm not sure how to look up who is strong in tax unfortunately. Sorry about that. The only way to do it is to ask the people at the firm who they work with.

 

For Big 4 I only think strength/market share matter if the one you choose is a clear bottom feeder to the other three, and there I'm just thinking in terms of promotion and growth opportunity within tax. I don't believe that's much of an issue in Chicago. You'll find most of the large companies have some work with 3 or even all of the big 4 in something (advisory, audit, tax, etc) so there's plenty of work to go around.

I like CWM's idea re:working at a smaller shop if you eventually want to go out on your own.

 
allysan1027:
accountancy major? E&Y's "famous" FSO department? the best place to go to make partner?

jesus christ just hope you don't get fired for being a douchebag

I do not understand how that is dbaggy in any way? E&Y has a very interesting FSO department due to it being separate from the other departments...

 

2012 Leaders In Tax by USA Revenue:

PricewaterhouseCoopers : $2,578,910,000 Ernst & Young : $2,542,000,000 Deloitte Tax : $2,482,730,000 KPMG : $1,553,310,000

For BIG4 Tax in New York, I'd probably rank the firms in this order as well. However, that's subjective to begin with and can be different by region. Major corporations will use most or all of the BIG4 for various tax projects, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. The only thing you can do to check is find out the auditing firm for the corporation, because that guarantees the firm does the ASC 740 tax work for that corporation as well.

 

OP - what are your academic credentials - MTx, JD, etc? Based on that will likely indicate which service line you will be hired into. Have you been made an offer and if so into which service line?

 

Qui porro laudantium qui incidunt. Atque error aperiam aut velit velit. Vitae quia rerum quae et. Voluptas quo nisi quos ut vero.

Recusandae cum molestiae numquam consequatur. Dolores nostrum tempora quas odit reprehenderit quidem et fugiat. Mollitia in molestias cumque eum iste aut ea voluptatem. Omnis reprehenderit ducimus et qui. Quia corrupti quia nesciunt ex dolor pariatur quaerat.

Big 4 Accounting Recruiting Guide Interview Questions and Answers, Networking Guide and more - Complete 50 page guide.

Career Advancement Opportunities

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Jefferies & Company 02 99.4%
  • Goldman Sachs 19 98.8%
  • Harris Williams & Co. (++) 98.3%
  • Lazard Freres 02 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 03 97.1%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Harris Williams & Co. 18 99.4%
  • JPMorgan Chase 10 98.8%
  • Lazard Freres 05 98.3%
  • Morgan Stanley 07 97.7%
  • William Blair 03 97.1%

Professional Growth Opportunities

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Lazard Freres 01 99.4%
  • Jefferies & Company 02 98.8%
  • Goldman Sachs 17 98.3%
  • Moelis & Company 07 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 05 97.1%

Total Avg Compensation

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Director/MD (5) $648
  • Vice President (19) $385
  • Associates (86) $261
  • 3rd+ Year Analyst (13) $181
  • Intern/Summer Associate (33) $170
  • 2nd Year Analyst (66) $168
  • 1st Year Analyst (202) $159
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (144) $101
notes
16 IB Interviews Notes

“... there’s no excuse to not take advantage of the resources out there available to you. Best value for your $ are the...”

Leaderboard

1
redever's picture
redever
99.2
2
Secyh62's picture
Secyh62
99.0
3
Betsy Massar's picture
Betsy Massar
99.0
4
BankonBanking's picture
BankonBanking
99.0
5
kanon's picture
kanon
98.9
6
CompBanker's picture
CompBanker
98.9
7
dosk17's picture
dosk17
98.9
8
DrApeman's picture
DrApeman
98.9
9
GameTheory's picture
GameTheory
98.9
10
bolo up's picture
bolo up
98.8
success
From 10 rejections to 1 dream investment banking internship

“... I believe it was the single biggest reason why I ended up with an offer...”