Associate Director Private & Trusts Assurance
About the position
Grant Thornton is seeking an Associate Director for their Private & Trusts Assurance team. This role is crucial for ensuring the quality of complex compliance work and for developing advisory services for clients, including individuals, trustees, and estates. The team focuses on personal tax matters and combines compliance with advisory capabilities. The Associate Director will work closely with a Director and the wider Private teams to achieve these goals.
Responsibilities
- Second-reviewing the most technically demanding and interesting personal tax returns in the portfolio, including areas like private equity transactions, trust income and gains, exempt income and reliefs (EIS/SEIS, pensions), residence and domicile matters, cross-border income, and complex capital gains computations.
- Identifying advisory opportunities from return preparation and review work, and bringing them to the attention of the client-responsible Director.
- Liaising with internal colleagues to support their clients, including attending calls and assisting with pitch documents and quotes.
- Delivering advisory work across a broad range of personal tax areas, including UK and international residence and domicile, double tax treaties, income extraction strategies, and inheritance tax/estate planning.
- Working closely with the dedicated Director and specialists to ensure advice is commercially sound and technically robust.
- Helping to develop and maintain client relationships, supporting the Director in client-facing conversations and written advice.
- Acting as a technical resource for colleagues with ad hoc questions.
- Reviewing and providing feedback on work prepared by more junior team members.
- Contributing to team knowledge-sharing, including internal training or technical updates.
- Helping to embed good practice and consistency in the team's approach to complex compliance and advisory work.
Requirements
- Extensive experience of personal tax compliance, including the preparation or review of complex self-assessment returns.
- Strong technical knowledge across income tax, capital gains tax, and inheritance tax.
- Understanding of trust taxation (UK and ideally non-UK) as it relates to personal tax returns.
- Familiarity with non-domicile and international tax matters, including the remittance basis, FIG claims, transitional repatriation facility, and double tax treaty claims.
- Proven ability to identify advisory angles and translate technical knowledge into practical, client-focused advice.
- Experience of contributing to or delivering written advisory work, not just compliance.
- Comfortable in client-facing situations, with the ability to communicate complex tax issues clearly to sophisticated but non-technical clients.
- A collaborative working style and a genuine interest in supporting the development of more junior colleagues.
- Good judgement about when to escalate and when to take ownership.
- An organised approach to managing a varied workload across review, advisory, and support responsibilities.
Nice-to-haves
- Experience of private equity-related tax issues — carried interest, co-investment, management arrangements.
Benefits
- Competitive salary and reward package
- Tailored development programmes and access to coaching
- Flexible bank holidays
- Pension
- Life assurance
- Private medical insurance
- Additional holiday purchasing
- Health benefits
- Benefits giving access to shopping discounts, gym memberships, financial advice