I recently accepted a job to join one of the Big 4 in a tax group but I have not yet started. I was visiting a guy in Washington, DC, and one of his friends worked for the same Big 4 in the "National Tax Services" group. I was unfamiliar with this group and we did not talk about his job in detail because I was a little embarassed that I didn't know about it. The Google Machine was relatively unhelpful; I found some generic descriptions, but nothing too specific. It looks like all the major firms have a similar groups, and from what I can tell, all of them are in DC.
I was wondiering if someone could explain what the group does and how is it different than core tax? From what little my acquantice said, it did not sound like he had a lot of tax-accounting experience.
I never saw a job advertisement for, or any reference to, this group when I was applying and researching my career options. Is it some sort of secret/niche group that does not actively hire? Maybe they only hire from within, if so, is it something that I should consider as a career goal/path?
Are the salaries the same as other tax groups?
Does anyone have any first-hand experience with working in the group that they can share?