October 28, 2008 2:03 pm

by Bob Norton

Mr. Foster makes many good points. What he may not be aware of is just how pronounced this issue is for the global tax industry. Not only are companies facing acute tax succession and talend shortage issues, but the governmental tax authorities are as well. I propose that, as part of Tax 2.0, we form a workgroup to study this issue using real demographical data by country for both industry and government tax professionals. My guess is that over the next 10 years, the current “acute” problem will increase to potentially crisis proportions. As was concluded at the first Tax 2.0 forum, one lever that must be pulled is to partner with the governments to reduce the compliance workload and effort wasted on inefficient data management. If we can show them real data to support the contention that it is in both industry’s and government’s interest to jointly address the talent shortage problem, we may have success.

The other levers that the talent workgroup should look into are

1)new methods of training to accelerate learning such as using pictures and graphic art, etc. I believe there are studies indicating that learning by reading is quite inefficient for human brains when compared to pictures and symbols. Professor William Byrnes of Thomas Jefferson Law School has some creative ideas based on the science of learning that we could tap into.

2)Industry-wide tax recruiting campaigns to attract recent grads to the field.

Tax talent is an issue of global proportions and Tax 2.0 is the perfect forum for taking it head on! Let’s colloborate, study the data and develop suitable action plans to control our destiny to the extent possible.