Liang Wang - Tax

• What inspires you?
• Why did you choose to join Tax?
• What does Tax do?
• What have you been doing since you joined?
• What does your current role involve?
• What do you enjoy most about your job?
• Can you outline any interesting projects you've been involved with?
• What qualities do you need to succeed at Barclays?
• What qualities do you need to succeed in Tax?
• Why join Tax?
• Who at work inspires you and why?

Transcript

What inspires you?
I’m drawing Barclays head office which is in Canary Wharf, amongst all the amazing buildings, Barclays head office is not actually the tallest or the biggest. It really reminds me about Barclays as a bank because it has solid foundations and moving forward steadily in the storm of the credit crunch. I have full confidence in the bank and proud to be a member of it.

Why did you choose to join Tax?
I always knew I wanted to pursue a career within Tax because I learnt tax at University level and I studied for it within my degree and I really enjoyed studying it. I also did quite well in my exams as well which was a reassurance. The Tax programme really attracted me because it was one of the aspects of practice that overlaps between law and accounting. It can be very technical in terms of the fact you have to go into the legislation to find the answer for the questions. It can also be very practical because you also answer the questions using your knowledge and applying that knowledge to the company side of the law.

What does Tax do?
We deal with all the tax information, tax compliance work in terms of our tax return for Barclays and also look after every trade or every product - the tax side of it. For example, if we have a new product launching, they will come to us in the tax department asking what the tax implication is of launching this product and I will give them advice. Barclays tax department actually covers more than just the legislation application and also the advisory part, it is split into different departments and we deal with international aspects as well as the UK aspect.

What have you been doing since you joined?
Since I joined Barclays in September last year I have been into different departments within tax. As a graduate within the Tax department we do something called rotations. So each graduate goes into a different department within tax either twice a year or more than that. Since I joined I have been to the VAT department and also the Compliance department where we mostly do the VAT return and annual tax return. So I have been helping people doing that in both departments and have also been doing ad hoc projects.

What does your current role involve?
I am currently working in the Corporation Tax Compliance Team. We just filled our tax return for Barclays Bank PLC in June. We actually put that to HMRC and also present them with the procedures we were adopting this year because we are using a whole new process of actually filling this tax return. Barclays Bank tax return is actually one of the largest within the country, so we are using a new procedure trying to solve everything and also trying to bring up a whole new way of doing things, which cuts the time of our department and also produces a much better return. So I am happy to help on that process and produce this tax return.

What do you enjoy most about your job?
Since I joined Barclays last year I have really enjoyed bringing tax issues into practice and how it impacts on the bank as a whole. That really brings what I learned at University into reality – to see the big tax computations actually performing, and everything fitting together. We produce a figure of how much tax we are due to pay and that is just very impressive to bring the whole picture together.

Can you outline any interesting projects you have been involved with?
The interesting projects I have been involved with can be the ones where we have to solve the foreign tax returns. So we actually have to dig into the details of different countries tax payments. Also liaising with HMRC is really impressive - I really enjoyed the presentation we presented to HMRC.

What qualities do you need to succeed at Barclays?
The quality as an individual to be successful in Barclays, I think, is that you have to be very professional because it is an international bank. You also have to have an open mind because there is so much to learn and you have to accept them as an individual. And also you have to be flexible because you are probably going to be asked to go on a business trip to Kenya, or wherever, so I think you need to have those characteristics.

What qualities do you need to succeed in Tax?
From my experience, working within Barclays Tax, you have to be a team player because you are working in a small group of six people and it’s very important that you get on with them. Also you have to have attention to detail because of the way tax legislation can be. You have to really go into the nitty gritty of it and explore the different areas.