Developing the Tax Leaders You Will Need Tomorrow
Corporate tax has a talent problem that may not become fully visible until organizations begin looking for their next generation of leaders.
Many early- and mid-career tax professionals developed during a period when traditional apprenticeship was disrupted. They spent less time watching senior professionals work through difficult questions, listening to leaders interact with finance and the business, and learning through the countless informal exchanges that once happened naturally inside an office.
At the same time, the capabilities expected of future tax leaders are expanding.
Companies need professionals with strong technical foundations, sound judgment, technology fluency, business acumen, and the ability to communicate tax issues to people outside the function. That combination takes years to develop.
For Heads of Tax, the question is not simply whether today's team can perform today's work: Are you developing the people you will need to lead the tax function five or 10 years from now?
Why Is the Tax Leadership Pipeline Becoming a Bigger Concern?
Tax has always been a profession in which experience compounds.
Professionals learn the rules, but they also learn when those rules require interpretation. They encounter transactions, audits, restructurings, regulatory changes, and business decisions that teach them how tax operates in the real world.
Eventually, the strongest professionals develop something more difficult to teach: judgment.
The disruption of traditional working environments changed some of the ways that development occurs. A junior professional working alongside an experienced tax executive may hear the executive think through an issue before reaching a conclusion. A manager may observe how the Head of Tax frames that same issue differently for the CFO than for another tax professional.
Those experiences help professionals understand not just what the answer is, but how experienced leaders arrive at it and communicate it.
When those opportunities disappear, development does not necessarily stop. But it does become easier to miss.
Is This Really About Remote vs. In-Office Work?
No.
Different organizations have made different choices about remote, hybrid, and in-office work, and all three models can succeed. The more important question is whether the company's development practices fit its work model.
An in-office tax department may naturally create more opportunities for observation and spontaneous interaction. But putting people in the same building does not guarantee meaningful development.
Likewise, a remote tax department can develop excellent professionals if leaders deliberately create opportunities for coaching, exposure, and increasingly difficult work.
Hybrid teams face their own challenge: making sure developmental opportunities do not disproportionately flow to the people who happen to be physically closest to senior leadership.
The common requirement is intentionality. If development once happened partly through proximity and now proximity is inconsistent, leaders have to replace chance with structure.
What Are Future Tax Leaders Actually Going to Need?
Technical expertise remains foundational.
Technology has not made tax knowledge less important. In some respects, it may make deep knowledge and judgment even more valuable.
AI and other technologies can accelerate research, automate processes, organize information and generate potential answers. But someone still has to determine whether those answers are correct and appropriate for the business.
A professional cannot effectively evaluate an output without understanding the underlying subject matter. The future tax leader therefore needs both technical depth and the ability to use technology intelligently.
But that is only part of the leadership profile.
Senior tax professionals increasingly must be able to:
- Connect tax issues to broader business decisions.
- Explain complex matters to non-tax executives.
- Develop and retain strong teams.
- Evaluate risk under uncertainty.
- Work across finance, legal, treasury, and other functions.
- Lead technology and process change.
- Make decisions when there is no obvious technical answer.
- Communicate the value of the tax function to senior management.
Those capabilities do not suddenly appear when someone receives a vice president title. They have to be developed much earlier.
Are Your Mid-Career Tax Professionals Getting Enough Exposure?
One of the easiest groups to overlook is the middle of the tax organization.
Analysts and newer professionals often receive structured training. Senior leaders naturally participate in important meetings and business decisions.
Managers and senior managers can become caught between those two groups. They are experienced enough to perform independently but may not yet have consistent exposure to the situations that prepare them for executive leadership. That exposure matters.
A technically excellent tax manager who has never presented to the CFO, participated in a cross-functional business discussion or explained a complicated tax issue to a non-tax audience may have a significant gap to close before being ready for a senior leadership role.
Heads of Tax can create those opportunities before the promotion is necessary.
- Invite a rising leader into an executive meeting.
- Ask that person to present part of a tax update.
- Give them responsibility for a cross-functional project.
- Allow them to work directly with an outside advisor or business-unit leader.
- Then discuss what happened afterward.
The objective is not simply visibility. It is learning how leaders operate in situations where technical knowledge alone is insufficient.
How Do You Build Judgment Before Someone Becomes a Leader?
Judgment develops through increasingly difficult decisions accompanied by feedback.
If senior leaders retain every complex issue because it is faster or safer to handle it themselves, the organization may solve today's problem while creating tomorrow's succession problem.
Developing professionals need opportunities to work through ambiguity. That might mean asking a manager to recommend a course of action rather than simply research an issue. Instead of asking, "What does the guidance say?" ask, "What do you think we should do, and why?" Allow the person to identify the risks, consider alternatives, and explain the business implications.
The senior leader still owns the ultimate decision, but the developing professional gets to practice the thinking that leadership will eventually require. Over time, those repetitions matter.
Why Does Storytelling Belong in Tax Leadership Development?
Tax professionals often build careers around solving complicated problems. That does not automatically prepare them to explain why those problems matter.
Yet executive leadership requires exactly that.
A future Head of Tax may need to explain a technical risk to the CFO in five minutes, present a tax strategy to the board, justify an investment in technology or help business leaders understand the tax implications of a transaction.
The audience usually does not need a tax lecture. It needs clarity.
- What is happening?
- Why does it matter?
- What are the options?
- What does Tax recommend?
Developing this skill requires opportunities to communicate outside the tax function. Heads of Tax should therefore evaluate future leaders not only by the quality of their technical work, but also by their ability to make that work understandable and relevant to the business.
What Happens If Companies Don't Develop Enough Tax Leaders?
Eventually, an internal development problem becomes an external recruiting problem.
- A company needs a new Head of Tax.
- A vice president leaves unexpectedly.
- A succession plan reveals that nobody internally is ready.
- The organization enters the market expecting to find an executive with 15 or 20 years of increasingly sophisticated experience.nal recruiting problem.
But every candidate in that market had to develop somewhere. If companies across the profession underinvest in mid-career development, the result is not simply weaker internal succession pipelines. It is a thinner external market for everyone.
Organizations may find themselves competing for a relatively small group of professionals who combine technical depth, leadership ability, executive communication skills, business judgment and technology fluency.
That is why talent development should not be treated solely as an HR initiative. For the Head of Tax, it is a long-term capability issue. For the CFO, it is a succession and business-continuity issue. And for the organization, it can eventually become a recruiting issue.
When Should Tax Succession Planning Begin?
Long before someone announces a retirement or departure. Succession planning is most useful when it identifies the experiences future leaders still need time to acquire.
Perhaps a potential successor is technically excellent but has limited executive exposure. Another person may communicate well but needs broader international experience. A promising manager may need to lead people rather than projects. Those gaps are much easier to address over several years than several months.
Not every future leadership position will ultimately be filled internally. External hiring brings valuable experience, new perspectives, and capabilities the existing team may not possess. But even organizations that expect to recruit externally benefit from developing their internal talent.
A strong pipeline creates options. It also produces better-prepared managers and directors who can support whichever executive eventually leads the function.
Development Has to Match the Future of Tax
The tax function is changing quickly. Technology will continue to automate work. AI will become increasingly embedded in tax processes. Organizations will continue experimenting with remote, hybrid, and in-office structures.
But none of those changes eliminates the need for people capable of exercising judgment, leading teams, and explaining tax to the business. If anything, those capabilities become more important as routine work becomes easier to automate.
The next generation of tax leaders is already inside today's organizations. The question is what they are learning while they are there.
Heads of Tax cannot assume that years of service will automatically produce leadership readiness. They have to create the experiences that turn technical professionals into business leaders.
Because when the next leadership vacancy appears, it will be too late to begin developing the person you wish were ready.
