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I have recruited tax professionals for more than twenty years, and the corporate tax market is entering one of the more interesting periods I can remember.

The market has certainly changed over the last few years. Firms have become more selective about recruitment, hiring decisions are more closely scrutinised and candidates are generally moving with greater care than they did during the exceptionally active post-pandemic market. However, I would not describe corporate tax recruitment as a market in decline. If anything, there are signs that activity is beginning to improve, and the demand for experienced corporate tax professionals remains strong in a number of important areas.

From our own work in the market, we are currently seeing particular demand around Manager, Senior Manager and Director level, with firms looking for people who can combine strong technical corporate tax knowledge with advisory experience, client management and commercial awareness.

What I find more interesting than the number of vacancies, however, is the way the specification is changing. Firms are not simply looking for additional people to process more corporate tax work. Increasingly, they are looking for professionals who can advise, interpret, communicate with clients and understand the wider commercial context in which tax decisions are being made.

That trend is likely to accelerate over the next few years.

Not because corporate tax is disappearing. Quite the opposite. Corporate tax is becoming more complicated at exactly the same time as technology is making many of the processes involved in dealing with that complexity faster and cheaper.

The result could be one of the biggest changes to the corporate tax career model in decades.

A market that is becoming more confident

The wider UK employment market has been subdued for a considerable period, but there are now some signs of improvement. The KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs showed permanent appointments stabilising in July 2026 after a period of contraction, while the rate at which permanent vacancies were falling had also moderated significantly. (kpmg.com)

Corporate tax has remained comparatively resilient throughout this period.

Our own experience suggests that firms are still prepared to recruit when they see a clear need or identify someone capable of strengthening the team. What has changed is the degree of selectivity. A few years ago, some firms were primarily recruiting additional capacity. Today, the conversation is more likely to centre on what a new hire can add beyond capacity.

At Manager and Senior Manager level, advisory capability is becoming increasingly important. At Director level, firms are asking more questions about client development, sector expertise, leadership and the ability to contribute towards growth. International tax experience, transactions work and exposure to increasingly complex areas of corporate tax can also make a significant difference.

That tells us something important about where the profession is heading. The definition of a strong corporate tax professional is becoming broader.

Compliance isn't disappearing, but its economics are changing

Corporate tax compliance will still be necessary in 2030. Businesses will still require corporation tax returns, calculations will still need to be correct, tax provisions will need to be reviewed and ultimately somebody will remain accountable for what is submitted.

What is much harder to imagine is those processes continuing to operate in exactly the same way.

AI and automation are already entering professional-services workflows at considerable speed. Thomson Reuters' 2026 research found that 81% of tax and audit firm professionals were using AI tools at least several times a week. Its research among corporate tax clients also found very high expectations that professional firms should use AI to improve the quality of their service. (thomsonreuters.com)

The immediate impact is unlikely to be an AI system independently replacing a sophisticated corporate tax adviser. The more significant near-term effect is the removal of time from everyday processes.

Technical research can be accelerated. First drafts can be produced quickly. Large documents can be reviewed and summarised. Data can be interrogated more efficiently. Routine correspondence can be created automatically and increasingly sophisticated tax software can reduce the amount of manual work required in calculations, reconciliations and compliance workflows.

Individually, none of these developments removes the need for a corporate tax professional. Collectively, however, they change the economics of the traditional model.

Clients will continue to pay significant fees where an adviser helps them manage a major tax exposure, structure a transaction or make an important commercial decision. They may be less willing to pay premium professional-services rates for large amounts of process-driven work that increasingly capable technology can complete much faster.

The commodity element of corporate tax therefore becomes cheaper. The judgement around it becomes more valuable.

At the same time, tax is becoming more complicated

This is why I am sceptical of predictions that AI simply results in dramatically fewer tax advisers.

Technology may simplify individual tasks, but the environment in which corporate tax professionals operate is becoming more complex.

Pillar Two is an obvious example. The UK's implementation of the global minimum tax regime has introduced Multinational Top-up Tax and Domestic Top-up Tax alongside the wider international framework. For large multinational businesses, this creates substantial additional requirements around data, calculations, reporting and interpretation. (gov.uk)

Transfer pricing is moving in a similar direction. The proposed International Controlled Transactions Schedule is expected to apply for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027 and will require in-scope multinational businesses to provide standardised information about cross-border related-party transactions. HMRC has explicitly said this information will support automated as well as manual risk assessment. (gov.uk)

HMRC itself is also becoming more digital. Its transformation plans envisage at least 90% of interactions with taxpayers and intermediaries being digital by 2030, alongside greater use of automation, third-party data and AI-supported compliance activity. (gov.uk)

This creates an interesting dynamic. Businesses will potentially provide more structured information to HMRC, HMRC will become increasingly sophisticated in analysing it, and advisers themselves will have access to better technology.

The future corporate tax adviser may therefore spend less time preparing information and considerably more time interpreting what that information means, where the risks lie and how a business should respond.

Manager could become the pivotal grade

One of the areas I think will change most is the role of the Corporate Tax Manager.

The traditional corporate tax career has been built through repetition. Junior professionals prepare computations, research technical questions, draft correspondence and gradually develop an understanding of how tax works in practice. They then begin reviewing work, answering more complicated client questions, managing portfolios and eventually undertaking substantial advisory work.

That process does more than teach technical knowledge. It develops judgement and pattern recognition.

A good Manager has usually seen hundreds of businesses and hundreds of tax issues before reaching that level. They start to recognise where problems are likely to arise and which questions need to be asked before somebody has necessarily articulated the problem.

Technology may remove some of the repetitive work through which that experience was traditionally accumulated, but it is unlikely to remove the need for judgement itself.

Instead, I suspect the Manager role moves upwards.

A greater proportion of time could be spent dealing with unusual items, technical interpretation, advisory projects, project management and direct client conversations. The job becomes less about supervising the production of work and more about deciding what needs to be done with the information the technology produces.

This already reflects a change we are seeing in recruitment. When firms describe the Managers and Senior Managers they most want to hire, technical ability is generally assumed. What increasingly differentiates candidates is whether they can apply that knowledge in an advisory context, communicate effectively with clients and understand the wider commercial issue.

The Corporate Tax Manager of the future may therefore be much closer to what we would historically have regarded as an adviser at a more senior grade.

Specialist knowledge should become increasingly valuable

The shift towards advisory work is also likely to increase the value of specialist corporate tax experience.

International tax should remain an important area because businesses are becoming increasingly global while governments continue to develop rules designed to tax multinational activity. Transfer pricing should benefit from the same trend, particularly as reporting requirements become more structured and tax authorities make greater use of data.

Pillar Two has already created demand for professionals capable of understanding a technically difficult regime that also requires significant interaction between tax, accounting, systems and data.

Transactions should remain another attractive area. Activity will naturally rise and fall with the wider deals market, but acquisitions, disposals, reorganisations and corporate restructurings continue to require judgement that goes far beyond completing a return.

Tax disputes and controversy could also become more significant as HMRC's ability to identify unusual patterns and potential risks improves.

Then there is tax technology, which could become one of the most important growth areas of all.

Traditionally, technology has been something that corporate tax professionals used. Over the next few years, understanding technology is likely to become part of being a good corporate tax professional.

That does not mean every Corporate Tax Manager needs to become a programmer. It means they need to understand what technology can do, where it can be trusted, where human review is required and how tax data moves through an organisation.

The particularly valuable individual may be somebody who sits between tax and technology: technically credible enough to understand the tax issue, but sufficiently comfortable with systems and data to improve how that work is delivered.

By 2030, that combination could command a substantial premium.

There is a training problem hiding inside all of this

There is, however, a problem that I do not think the profession has fully solved.

Firms increasingly want advisers. Yet much of the compliance work technology could automate has traditionally helped to create those advisers.

ICAEW's 2026 research into the UK mid-tier found that 68% of firms expect AI to reduce demand for some early-career accounting work. Importantly, 83% did not expect that to translate directly into fewer roles overall. Instead, the expectation is that work moves towards judgement, interpretation and oversight. (icaew.com)

That makes sense, but it creates an interesting question for the tax profession: how do you create someone with ten years of judgement without giving them the experiences from which that judgement traditionally developed?

A Senior Manager cannot simply appear fully formed. They need to have worked through enough situations to understand not only the legislation but how that legislation behaves in the real world.

If technology removes a substantial amount of junior production work, firms will need to become much more deliberate about developing those skills. Technical academies, case-based learning, rotations into specialist teams, earlier involvement in advisory work and earlier exposure to clients could all become more important.

This could turn into a major competitive issue.

The firms that use technology to improve junior development may produce better advisers. Those that regard AI primarily as a way of removing junior cost could discover later that they have weakened their own pipeline of future Managers, Directors and Partners.

We may not see the full consequences for several years.

A stronger mid-market could reshape corporate tax careers

The development of the UK accountancy market itself is another important part of this story.

Consolidation and private-equity investment have transformed parts of the profession. ICAEW's recent research into the mid-tier describes acquisition activity as a defining feature of the market and found that the overwhelming majority of participating firms had achieved fee growth. It also found that technology and AI are increasingly embedded within firms' strategic plans. (icaew.com)

This could have a significant effect on corporate tax.

When an accountancy group acquires another firm, it does not simply acquire fees. It acquires hundreds or potentially thousands of business relationships. Those clients can create demand for corporate tax advisory work, international tax, transactions, transfer pricing, VAT, employment tax and other specialist services.

As firms grow, the economics of employing specialist tax professionals become more attractive. A firm that might once have referred complex international tax work elsewhere can justify building its own capability once the wider client base becomes large enough.

We are already seeing increasingly ambitious corporate tax teams outside the traditional largest firms.

Over the next five years, I would expect the Top 10 to Top 30 part of the market to become more significant, with larger national groups, international mid-tier firms, specialist boutiques and strong independents all competing for experienced tax professionals.

For candidates, that could mean more credible career choices rather than fewer.

What firms want from Directors is changing too

The same evolution becomes even clearer at Director level.

Technical credibility remains essential, but increasingly it is only one part of the conversation. Firms want to know what a senior recruit will contribute to the development of the practice.

That may mean building a sector specialism, developing an international proposition, expanding existing client relationships, generating work from other service lines or creating a team around a particular area of expertise.

In our own senior recruitment work, discussions around Director-level appointments increasingly include questions about market profile, business development, relationships, pipeline and the individual's ability to contribute to growth.

That trend is likely to strengthen as firms themselves become larger and more commercially focused.

The future Corporate Tax Director cannot simply be the person to whom the most difficult technical question is passed. They will still need that technical credibility, but they may also be expected to build something around it.

So will firms employ fewer corporate tax advisers?

They may eventually require fewer people to deliver the same volume of traditional corporate tax work.

If technology allows one Manager to control a portfolio that previously required considerably more manual input, teams do not need to grow simply by adding another layer of people underneath them. The traditional pyramid could become narrower at some levels and more specialist at others.

But I do not think that means the corporate tax talent shortage simply disappears.

Instead, the definition of the shortage changes.

Today a firm may say that it cannot find enough Corporate Tax Managers. Increasingly, what it actually means is that it cannot find enough Managers with the right combination of technical ability, advisory experience and client skills.

In a few years' time, technology capability may become another requirement.

The market could therefore reach the apparently contradictory position where there are more corporate tax candidates available while firms simultaneously say that good people are becoming harder to find.

Both could be true.

The firms will simply be looking for a different type of person.

The corporate tax adviser of 2030

If somebody were starting a corporate tax career today, I would not tell them to worry that AI is about to eliminate the profession.

I would tell them to pay close attention to the parts of their job technology is becoming capable of doing and then deliberately develop the skills that sit above those tasks.

They should still learn the technical foundations properly. Without those foundations, it is difficult to challenge a piece of analysis produced by technology or identify when something does not look right.

But they should also seek exposure to clients, transactions and complex advisory work. They should understand businesses rather than simply their tax returns. They should become comfortable with data and technology and learn to explain complicated tax matters in a way that a non-tax specialist can understand.

As they become more senior, they should learn how relationships are developed and how work is won.

Because I do not believe the corporate tax adviser is disappearing.

The job is being repriced.

Routine production will become cheaper. Information will become easier to obtain. Technology will allow good professionals to handle substantially more work.

What remains scarce will be technical judgement, specialist expertise, commercial understanding, relationships and the ability to tell a client what they should actually do.

That could make the best corporate tax advisers of the next decade more valuable, not less.

The interesting question for firms is whether they are developing enough of them.