Arca Head of Tax at Arca to build the tax practice from scratch, integrating tax proactively into clients' financial lives. Lead the creation of an AI-native tax practice including document gathering, return preparation, and review.
Responsibilities
As Arca's Head of Tax, you'll build our tax practice from zero — the first tax hire, with a blank page and a mandate to make tax a proactive part of clients' financial life. Tax is where most of our clients feel the most friction, feel the most uncertain, and get the least help. A scramble for documents every spring, a preparer who sees one year at a time, and a wealth advisor who's never quite looped in. We think tax should be continuous, coordinated with the rest of the plan, and done ahead of the deadline instead of after it.
You're here to build an AI-native tax practice from day one including the document gathering process, return preparation and review, client projection/planning before a client thinks to ask, and more. You'll design what the agents do, where a professional's judgment has to step in, and ensure end-to-end quality.
This is a hands-on role involving return preparation, directly helping clients on their most complex situations, partner closely with our wealth advisors so tax and investment advice move as one, and own the service as a business: pricing, revenue, capacity, and the team you'll hire behind you. Most of your time goes to two things: doing the tax work and designing the platform that does it better, sitting next to the engineers who build it.
The tax practice. What we offer — starting with individual returns (1040s) and year-round planning, projections, and notices, and expanding to business returns (S-corps and other entity returns) for clients who own businesses — who it's for, and the standard every engagement is held to. You set the scope, the service model, the quality bar as well as selecting vendors (core tax return software in particular) to enable the business.
An AI-native tax process. End-to-end design of how tax work gets done at Arca — document collection, data normalization, preparation, review, filing, and post-filing. You'll work side by side with engineering and product to build it, and be the domain authority on every workflow.
Clients. You prepare, review, and own returns for clients whose situations take real expertise: stock options and RSUs, business income, S-corp owners, rental real estate, and multi-state filings. You explain tax in plain English and give clients confidence their needs are handled.
Partnership with our wealth advisors. Tax and investment advice as one plan, not two silos. You work with advisors on tax-loss harvesting, Roth conversions, charitable strategy, equity comp exercise timing, and withholding and estimated payments — and build the playbooks so advisors know when to bring you in.
Risk, compliance, and quality. Preparer standards, Circular 230 obligations, data security, engagement letters, review protocols, and an audit trail for every AI-assisted step.
The team. Hiring the preparers, reviewers, and specialists who come after you, and deciding which work we keep in-house versus partner on.
Example problems you’d work on
These are the kinds of questions the first year of this practice has to answer.
Tax season without the scramble. We already manage client accounts and know most of their financial picture. What does it take to have 80% of a return assembled before a client uploads a single document — and how do agents chase the remaining 20% seamlessly?
