Tax or Audit Better for Financial Regulation

Higheck123:

PTS:

Audit for sure. Gives more experience into the processes and things that you will need rather than just crunching and compiling numbers for tax purposes.

When I think of regulation I usually think SOX compliance, so audit does make sense, on the other hand, I have been told by a buddy in big4 audit that day to day audit associates mostly deal very little with regulatory aspects of the companies they audit. From what he said about tax associates, they do much more research and analysis of regulation in general and that if I were to enter the compliance field, those skills would be more useful/transferable than audit. Love to get some more opinions.

Former Big 4 Audit here. Unfortunately you aren't giving us much info here. It all depends on the type of regulation you want to do - do you want to do tax compliance or financial reporting/internal control compliance. Sounds like you want to deal with SOX so audit would be the clear path for you.

Not sure what type of clients your buddy has, but at my former firm, all the first years on public companies only performed SOX testing. If he's on private clients then they aren't required to be SOX compliant.

Higheck123:

Soros:

The biggest question is - why the hell would you want to do compliance/regulation??

Do an audit internship and see if you can get a view of some compliance work... you may change your career path - to art or something.

Definitely not the first time I have been asked that. From what I have been told, and from what I have researched, I understand compliance work it is a combination of law and accounting. Since I have an interest in both, working in compliance seemed pretty logical.

Just as an aside, is it easier/harder to move from audit to tax or tax to audit? Or, does it even matter if you are just coming from an internship in one or the other?

No real significant difference. Either direction you will have to start at the bottom of the totem pole again - if coming from tax to audit, you will need to learn the audit procedures which tax does not teach you. If going from audit to tax, you will need to learn the tax rules which audit does not teach you (until you get to your 3rd or 4th year, but at that point, you should already have an idea if you want to do audit/tax). Big 4's do a rotational program where during non-busy season, you can rotate into the other department for a few months to check it out.

I laugh when people say you will have interaction with F500 execs. As a first year, you definitely will not be talking to them - this is a client service business, you think the partners are going to let a first year talk to the head honcho? Hell no, only managers and above get a chance to talk to them; you may be able to sit in on a convo, but it's highly unlikely as it's usually just the partner and the C-level exec. The most interaction you're going to get is with the AP clerks and accounting managers, possibly controller. The only caveat to this is for VC/PE/HF firms or tech start-ups where the companies are extremely small.