Senior Tax Associate

Senior Tax Associate | R.D. Barnett PLLC

Compensation$80,000-$105,000, depending on experience, credentials, and demonstrated capabilityStart dateTarget start date of no later than January 5, 2027LocationRemote within approved U.S. work locations

Sharp tax work. An accounting brain. A soft spot for better systems.

Job postings are funny

They are often part wish list, part sales pitch, and part collection of phrases no human has ever used in conversation. That does not tell you what the work feels like, who you will work with, or whether you will actually enjoy being here. We would rather be honest, so here is the real story.

About R.D. Barnett PLLC

R.D. Barnett PLLC is a Seattle-based tax, accounting, and advisory firm founded by Dean Barnett to help entrepreneurs, privately held businesses, and individuals make smarter financial decisions. We work alongside our clients to understand what they are building, how their businesses operate, and how their financial decisions connect.

Our clients include closely held businesses, professional service firms, real estate owners, entrepreneurs, and the individuals and families behind them. Their needs often span business operations, multiple entities, related real estate, and personal tax planning. We connect those pieces so clients can understand their numbers, spot opportunities earlier, and make confident decisions.

A growing focus of our firm is PracticeDen, our veterinary-focused tax, accounting, and advisory service line. We work with independent veterinary practices and their owners, helping them understand their numbers, navigate tax decisions, and build businesses that support their goals. From opening or acquiring a practice to growing an established one or planning a transition, we connect the financial details to the bigger picture. We also continue to serve clients beyond the veterinary industry.

This role has a functional home in Tax and works with accounting, advisory, and client-service teammates across the firm. The goal is bigger than accurate filings. We want the business, related entities, and owner’s individual return to tell one coherent story, with practical advice clients can actually use.

The Role (and Why It’s Interesting)

We are looking for an experienced, hard-working, and self-motivated Senior Tax Associate who can prepare a wide variety of returns, hand off thoughtful, reviewer-ready work, and help us make tax season run a little smarter. You will work across entity and individual clients, often following the numbers across an operating business, related entities and real estate, and the owner’s personal return.

You will own day-to-day execution, workpaper quality, status visibility, and early issue identification. Tax Managers will set technical direction, approve material positions, and help you grow toward greater independence, planning exposure, client leadership, and review responsibility.

Tax preparation is the main event. You will gather information, build workpapers, prepare calculations and returns, support planning, handle e-filing and delivery, research unusual issues, and help resolve notices or other technical projects. In other words: you will do real tax work from beginning to end, not spend your days moving numbers from one box to another without understanding why.

This is also not a stay-in-your-lane-forever role. While traditional accounting work won’t be your primary responsibility, a strong accounting brain is essential. You should be able to read a trial balance, understand the financial statements, reconcile important accounts, propose adjustments, and recognize when the accounting needs attention before a return can move forward. Recurring bookkeeping is not part of this role unless separately assigned and scoped.

As R.D. Barnett grows, this role can grow with it. We do not expect you to know every answer. We do expect you to be genuinely inquisitive with a solution-driven purpose: ask better questions, trace the issue to its source, and move toward a sensible answer. Curiosity about how businesses operate and how tax decisions affect their owners is essential.

What You’ll Actually Do

Make tax work look easy

• Prepare the returns. All kinds of them. That includes federal, state, and local returns for individuals and closely held entities, with a core mix of Forms 1040, 1065, 1120-S, and 1120. It may also include trusts and estates, related real estate entities, and other returns as assigned.
• Make review a pleasant experience. Build clean, complete workpapers with clear support, reconciliations, calculations, notes, and tie-outs. Your reviewer should not need detective training to follow your work.
• Follow the financial trail. Connect business, related-entity, real estate, and individual filings so every related return tells the same story.
• Bring an accounting brain to the return. Reconcile balance-sheet accounts, retained earnings, fixed assets, basis, owner activity, payroll, sales or excise tax, and other book-to-tax items that are part of the engagement.
• Know what went into the software. Enter and validate tax data, carryforwards, fixed assets, prior-year items, and current-year activity in UltraTax CS or a comparable platform.
• Raise your hand early. Spot missing information, inconsistencies, unusual issues, capacity concerns, and potential deadline problems before they become deadline-day surprises.
• See the process through. Help with extensions, estimates, e-filing, secure delivery, tax notices, and the less-glamorous details that still have to be right.
• Know when the work has changed. Recognize services outside the agreed scope and bring them to a manager before committing to additional work, fees, or timing.
• Support planning without freelancing. Identify potential planning opportunities, research assigned questions, document the facts and authority, and bring clear recommendations and unresolved questions to the manager.

Use technology like you mean it

• Make Excel earn its keep. Build traceable workpapers and useful analyses, clean up data, review trial balances, and propose journal entries without turning the workbook into a haunted house.
• Pick up new tools quickly. Tax software, workflow platforms, portals, collaboration tools, if it makes the work better, you should be comfortable learning it.
• Use AI thoughtfully, not blindly. Look for responsible ways to improve research, documentation, data handling, and repetitive workflows. Use only firm-approved systems, protect client information, verify every output, and remain accountable for the final work.
• Notice when a process is clunky, then improve it. Test practical fixes, document what works, and help us scale without trading accuracy for speed.

Be a great human to work with

• Keep people out of the dark. Communicate about status, open items, scope, risks, and deadlines before someone has to chase you.
• Write like a person. Draft clear, professional client emails and explain requests without burying the point in tax jargon.
• Treat review notes as fuel. Ask thoughtful questions, apply the feedback, and make the next engagement better.
• Help shape the firm. Contribute to documentation, training, and the systems and habits our growing team will rely on.
• Work across the team. Coordinate with accounting, advisory, and client-service teammates when the tax return exposes an accounting issue, planning opportunity, or client need.

What You Bring to the Team

The must-haves

• Real tax experience. You have at least three years of recent public accounting tax experience, including at least two busy seasons owning returns from client intake through reviewer submission. You can prepare a varied return mix, understand what the numbers mean, and deliver work that is truly ready for review.
• Individual and entity experience. You have meaningful experience with individual and closely held business returns, not just one narrow slice of a return. Trusts and estates are bonus points!
• A strong accounting brain. You can read financial statements, reconcile accounts, understand journal entries, and trace activity into a tax return without losing the plot.
• Excel power-user energy. Formulas, lookups, pivot tables, data cleanup, and well-organized workpapers should feel familiar, not frightening.
• An eye for the tiny things. You catch the transposed number, the missing support, and the line that does not tie before someone else does.
• AI and automation curiosity. When you see a repetitive process, you naturally wonder whether a robot should be doing the boring part. You are excited to test better ways of working, but you do not hand the robot the keys and walk away. Approved tools, client privacy, professional judgment, and verified outputs are nonnegotiable.
• Clear communication and sound judgment. You write well, think before you act, and can receive feedback without turning it into a courtroom drama.
• Busy-season stamina. You are prepared for 55+ hours during the heaviest filing-deadline stretches, typically February through April 15 and September through October 15. We hope that is reserved for the worst of times, not the regular rhythm.
• Remote-work reliability. You maintain a secure, professional workspace, dependable internet, and availability for Pacific Time collaboration during agreed working hours (typically 10am-2pm PST).
• Professional references from prior employers, supervisors, or clients.

CPA or Enrolled Agent credential is not required. We value demonstrated capability, sound judgment, and a commitment to continued learning.

Bonus points for:

• CPA license, EA certification, CPA eligibility, or active progress toward a credential
• Experience reviewing simpler returns or training less-experienced preparers
• Tax-tech fluency with UltraTax CS or another professional preparation platform, e-file and portal workflows, or digital delivery tools
• A useful AI or automation story: something you improved, sped up, or made less painful in a tax or accounting workflow
• Comfort around the broader accounting stack, such as QuickBooks, Workpapers CS, Practice CS, SurePrep, SafeSend, SharePoint, Notion, Missive, , Gusto, Double, or similar systems
• Experience with wonderfully complicated owners: closely held businesses, multi-entity structures, real estate, professional service firms, or business owners with interconnected tax needs
• Multistate, pass-through entity tax, basis, fixed asset, owner compensation, or closely held business planning experience

You’ll probably thrive here if…

• You keep the details on a short leash. Projects, files, open questions, and deadlines do not mysteriously disappear on your watch.
• You communicate before people have to ask. A clear update today is better than a heroic explanation tomorrow.
• You care about service. You want clients and teammates to have a genuinely good experience, and you are willing to take out the trash, literally or figuratively, when that is what helps.
• You can be trusted. You use discretion, exercise good judgment, and protect sensitive client information as if it were your own.
• You are genuinely inquisitive with a solution-driven purpose. You ask why, research and test what you do not know, and turn curiosity into a practical next step instead of collecting interesting questions for sport.
• You own your work. Mistakes happen; hiding them or repeating them is the problem. You speak up, fix the issue, and learn from it.
• You can handle change. R.D. Barnett is growing, technology keeps moving, and the perfect process may not exist yet.
• You take the work seriously without taking yourself too seriously. Public accounting is demanding. A sense of humor makes the hard days better.
• You build momentum as a form of mutual appreciation. You follow through, communicate early, and move work forward because making teammates chase you is nobody’s love language.

How You’ll Know You’re Crushing It

• Your reviewer can follow your work without a scavenger hunt. Returns tie, support is clear, and avoidable review notes become rare.
• There are fewer surprises. Missing information, odd activity, planning ideas, scope changes, and potential problems surface early.
• People trust your follow-through. Client requests make sense, deadlines stay visible, and projects do not vanish into a status-update black hole.
• The systems get smarter. You adopt new tools thoughtfully and improve processes without weakening accuracy, controls, or confidentiality.
• The numbers work too. You meet the production, realization, timekeeping, and project-delivery expectations assigned to your role and portfolio.
• You get better every cycle. Feedback shows up in the next engagement, and your confidence, judgment, and independence keep growing.

The Practical Stuff: Pay, Benefits, and Where You’ll Work

Now, let’s talk about the part of the job everyone scrolls for.

• Compensation: Full-time, exempt position with a base salary of $80,000-$105,000 annually, depending on experience, credentials, and demonstrated capability.
• Flexible start: Start date is flexible, with a target start no later than January 5, 2027.
• Remote work: This is a remote position within U.S. states and localities approved by the firm. Changes in primary work location or regular work from another state or locality require advance approval.
• Working hours: The role must maintain dependable availability for Pacific Time collaboration, client needs, training, and scheduled team meetings. The heaviest filing-deadline stretches may require 55+ hours, but that should describe the worst of times, not most of the time.
• Equipment: The firm provides the computer and standard technology equipment needed for the role, including monitors, keyboard, mouse, headset, and related accessories.
• Medical, dental, and vision: The firm currently pays 100% of the employee premium for its medical plan (BCBS PPO) and dental and vision plans (Delta Dental PPO). Coverage begins on the first day of the month following the employee’s start date. Dependents may be added at the employee’s cost. Benefits remain subject to plan terms.
• 401(k): The firm currently matches employee contributions up to 3% of eligible pay. Eligibility begins on the employee’s start date, subject to plan terms and the applicable vesting schedule.
• Paid holidays: Six current firm holidays: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, the day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day, plus four floating holidays. Tax-season blackout dates apply.
• Vacation: Fifteen vacation days per calendar year, prorated based on the official start date. Vacation is subject to the firm calendar and busy-season blackout periods.
• Paid sick and safe time: Accrual begins on the first day of employment. The firm uses Seattle’s paid sick and safe time requirements as its minimum standard and applies any more protective law required by the employee’s work location.
• Volunteer time: Two paid volunteer days.
• Professional development: Continuing education and growth opportunities, including reimbursement for approved certification, licensing, professional membership, and destination CPE expenses within firm policy.
• Optional cell-phone coverage: Participation in the firm’s Verizon plan is available under the current cell-phone policy. The firm does not subsidize or reimburse the purchase of the device.
• Personal tax support: Employees may use firm software to prepare their personal income tax returns and may request reasonable tax guidance from the firm’s principals at no charge, subject to firm policy.

Ready to Join R.D. Barnett?

If you are a strong tax preparer with an accounting mind, a sharp eye, and genuine curiosity about better technology, we would love to hear from you. Bring your judgment, your Excel shortcuts, and your best ideas for making tax work better. We will bring interesting clients, meaningful work, and a team that cares about doing both well!

Our process includes an introductory interview, a practical tax assessment, and a technical conversation with the hiring manager.

Come build something better with us at R.D. Barnett.

How to Apply and How to Stand Out

We will consider complete applications in the following order:

1. Introductory video: Candidates who submit a thoughtful 30-second to 3-minute introductory video will move to the top of the review list. Tell us who you are, why the role caught your attention, and what you would bring to R.D. Barnett. Production quality is not the point. We want to meet the human behind the resume.
2. Thoughtful cover letter: Candidates who write a specific, genuine cover letter will be considered next.
3. Standard application: We will also consider candidates who submit the application without a video or cover letter.

We notice thoughtful follow-up. A respectful LinkedIn message or direct email to a member of our team after applying can help us understand your interest and how you communicate. Please keep it human, specific, and concise.

Equal Opportunity and Accommodations

R.D. Barnett PLLC is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, citizenship or immigration status, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, disability, genetic information, military or veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the hiring process. Applicants who require an accommodation may contact .

Originally posted on Himalayas