This page has been created to collate resources that I believe you will find helpful and useful, working as a tax professional. I have personally used all the resources mentioned and can recommend all of them.
You can click on many of the headings to go straight to the resource.
Please note that some of the links included on this page are affiliate links. If you purchase through an affiliate link, I will get a small commission which will go towards the costs of running, and will support, the podcast, at no increased cost to you.
Therefore, if you enjoy, have gotten benefit from, or would just like to support the podcast (and are going to purchase any of the below anyway), it would be appreciated if you purchase through the links on this page.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey
This book has had the greatest positive impact on my professional development out of the ones I’ve read so far.
You will learn about 7 habits that, if you develop and incorporate into your life, will make you more effective. The book also goes some way in helping you to develop and incorporate them via exercises at the end of each chapter. The companion workbook has further exercises which I found super useful, and I recommend anyone reading the book to get and complete the workbook too.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some things said in this book that I don’t agree with and I haven’t incorporated into my life (‘spiritual’ renewal for example). But what I have taken from the book has made a huge positive difference on professional (and personal) life, and I have no doubt you will take away lots of useful information too.
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Successful Consulting by Anna Hipkiss, Teach Yourself
From the book, you will be able to improve your ‘soft’ skills required for a strong career in tax, and this exactly is the reason I picked up this book. Particularly, I wanted to bring up my advisory and consulting skills closer to my technical tax skills.
Some of my favourite chapters in this book covered managing client expectations (I’m a big fan of this!) project management, writing reports, giving presentations, dealing with difficult clients (not that any clients are difficult, right?), and marketing (selling) your services. But so much more was covered which is helpful for both in-house and external consultants.
If you like case studies, the book will be great for you, as it contains lots, which I found helpful, and they help to demonstrate what ‘excellent’ (and not excellent) consulting looks like.
If you’re like to learn about ways you can achieve your development and improvement objectives, there are some useful chapters at the start covering this. I found the tactics a little overboard, but the principles are definitely useful.
Just to note: this book is not aimed at tax consultants in particular, but at consultants generally, and so while I found the book useful overall, it does require some imagination in areas to apply it to the tax world. At the same time, this will be really useful for you if, like I was, you are finding yourself strong technically but are wanting to make yourself more rounded, because the focus of the book is those wider consulting skills.
Todoist (Digital To-Do List App)
Paper to-do lists and post-it notes used to do wonders in making sure I did what I needed to do at work. But it got to a point where I was rewriting my list almost daily. It was also messy from crossing things out, which was making it hard to keep on top of deadlines. The busier I become, the worse it got.
I never even considered a digital to-do list until I started listening to a productivity podcast (The Working With Podcast – mentioned below), but I now use one, Todoist – it has completely revolutionized my to-do list!
It has so many great features.
Some of my favourites are being able to see all tasks assigned to a particular day, being able to set alarms to prompt you at a particular time to do a task, attaching comments to tasks, organising actions by ‘projects’, and being able to access from any device (including computers and a phone app).
I highly recommend you give Todoist or another digital to-do list app (such a Trello if you would like a more visual list). You won’t believe the difference it makes!
This link will give you a free 2 months of premium membership, after which you can still use the basic version for free.
Skillshare (Online Courses)
If you’re looking for online courses to help you improve your job-related (or other) skills, then Skillshare is great.
One of the key reasons I like Skillshare is that it supports individual content creators, as opposed to businesses. These individuals tend to have very specialised knowledge, so you are able to learn some great information and get some great insights that you might not get from a standard course.
Skillshare is very affordable, as it works on a subscription basis. Once you have membership, you have access to all of the courses on their website for as long as you have membership. Membership costs from £7 to £13 a month, dependent on the length you want to subscribe for in one go.
You can get a free 14-day trial with the following link. You will have to put in card details to get the trial but you are able to immediately cancel the auto-renewal so no money is ever taken from your card.
I’ve personally used Skillshare to learn how to do some fancy PowerPoint animations and I intend to use it to learn some more advanced Excel and Word skills, which will save me time and hassle.
Just for some ideas, you may be interested in the following courses:
- Excel at Microsoft Excel – The Complete Beginner to Advanced Excel Mastery Course
What I love about Excel is there are always more you can know which will make tasks so much easier and quicker! Some of the things you can do with Excel may blow your mind! (Did I just say that out loud?)
- Microsoft Word 2016 – Word Bootcamp – Zero to Hero Training
Similar to Excel, you don’t know what you don’t know! And word can do so many great things that will make things easier and quicker. - The Business Writing Course
Strong, clear writing is essential for all tax professionals (how else can we communicate our first-class advice?!?), and we can always become clearer, more succinct, and quicker. Writing is not my natural strongpoint, and from working at improving over the years, I have come across so many great tips that you would never think of, nevermind think they are useful! I wouldn’t write off (no pun intended) enrolling on such a course.
Audible
If you have a long commute or travel a lot for work (or otherwise), then the chances are you have a lot of dead time. I used to be in that position although the current effects of coronavirus have significantly reduced my travel time.
Despite this, one way I love to take advantage of that time is to listen to audiobooks (or podcasts, of course!). I tend to listen to audio that is going to help me improve or develop in some way (yes, I’m obsessed).
If this is your forte, you could, of course, do the same, but you could listen to whatever you want – there’s so much you can choose from. I just think it is such a great way to use that dead time, so I can highly recommend giving it a go.
You can get one free audiobook via this link (or two if you have Amazon Prime), and then after 30 days, you will get one audiobook for £7.99 every month. You will have to put in your card details to get the free audiobook(s) but you will be able to cancel the subscription immediately to prevent payment after the 30-day period.
Some suggested audiobooks to get you started which will help you improve your skills and/or career:
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey (as above – and I’d still recommend the Workbook!)
- Getting Things Done by David Allen (the art of stress-free productivity – probably the most well-known productivity book; I’m a big advocate of productivity!)
The Working With Podcast
I’m a big advocate of productivity.
It’s a resource that all of us have a limited amount of, and so using your time effectively and productivity in my view is super important. Being productive will also positively affect your work-life balance, as it will allow you to get more done in less time.
The Working With Podcast has had a huge impact in my productivity, particularly in relation to stop wasting time getting bogged down in emails, and by introducing me to digital to-do lists!
I can highly recommend a listen, particularly this episode on processing your inboxes effectively.
You may think that sounds dull, but emails are an area where we waste a lot of our time, and this is all about stopping that time waste. It’s had a huge positive impact for me.
Tax Magazines
Tax magazines are a great source of information, especially early on in your career. I particularly have found them useful for technical knowledge and keeping up to date with changes.
My two favourites are Tax Advisor Magazine, produced by the Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) and Taxation Magazine, but nowadays I tend to only read Tax Advisor, as I get that for free as one of the benefits for being a member of the CIOT.
Taxation, however, does have a really good section that provides summaries of recent tax case law; if a case catches your interest you can then read the full case!
You are able to read both magazines online (if you have a subscription login of course – your employer may have one if you don’t have you own so no harm in asking) but there is something novel in the current digital world about reading the paper copy, which I personally always do where possible!
HMRC Manuals
If you’ve worked in tax for even a small amount of time, I imagine you have heard of HMRC Manuals. If not, you’re in for a treat.
These are a great source of guidance, insight into HMRC’s views on pretty much all areas of tax rules and laws, and the rules that HMRC officers must abide by and work to.
It will be useful to know which manuals will be useful for your job for the area of tax you work. You don’t need to know them back to front but knowing which ones to look at when you are researching something specific can save you a lot of time and hassle.
Some that are useful for me, and others working in Employment Tax, are:
- Employment Income Manual
- Employment Status Manual
- PAYE Manual
- National Insurance Manual
- Compliance Handbook Manual (covers penalties and compliance powers)
- Compliance Operational Guidance Manual (HMRC processes and procedures for carrying out compliance checks)
For those of you that work in other areas of tax, it would be great to hear from you so that I can build a list for the other taxes, too! Feel free to send me a message on LinkedIn or via the contact page.
Job Search
If you’re looking for a new tax role or tax job, then I can highly recommend the following job boards:
There are also many advertisements in the tax magazines mentioned above, which could take your fancy.