Episode 38: The Importance of Tax and Tax Agents, with Robyn Jacobson (Part 2)
In episode 38, you will hear Part 2 of Sam’s brilliant conversation with Robyn Jacobson, the Senior Advocate of The Tax Institute. She is well known in tax training circles, having been a professional tax trainer for 23 years and a regular conference and webinar presenter. With nearly three decades in the profession, Robyn’s public practice background preceded her training roles with Webb Martin, her own business, Cyntax, and TaxBanter.
Robyn is a Chartered Tax Adviser of The Tax Institute, a Fellow of both CA ANZ and CPA Australia, and a Registered Tax Agent. Based in Melbourne, she is involved in a number of Tax Institute committees and is the immediate past Chair of CPA Australia’s Victorian Public Practice Committee. Robyn regularly consults with The Treasury, the ATO and the professional bodies on technical issues including as a member of the ATO’s Tax Practitioner Stewardship Group.
Robyn is an avid advocate, social media commentator, columnist, blogger and podcaster and is regularly quoted in the media. Robyn was recognised in the Women In Finance Awards 2019 as the Winner of Thought Leader of the Year and was named in the global Top 50 Women in Accounting 2019. She was recently recognised in the Australian Accounting Awards 2020 as the Winner of both Thought Leader of the Year and the Accountants Daily Excellence Award.
In case you missed the first half of this conversation, go back and listen to Episode 37. This episode picks up where that one left off: Sam and Robyn continue their discussion of the key skills for accountants of the future, including in the areas of mental health, communication and social media.
Plus Robyn gives us her top three predictions for the major challenges facing our industry and the opportunities that are inherent in those challenges, if we are prepared.
Connect with Robyn via The Tax Institute
Listen to an excerpt
What we cover in this episode
The key skills accountants need for the future
How mental health has become something accountants need to be aware of when having difficult conversations with clients, staff and themselves
The importance of emotional intelligence, conflict resolution and other buzzwords
The growing need for our industry to take care of ourselves and each other
Australia’s ageing population and how that impacts not only skills accountants need but our industry as well
The fundamentals of understanding your audience, messaging and storytelling
What happened in the early days of the pandemic with the legislation and why Robyn started interpreting and explaining it
Why it’s so important that we get into this social media space (because others are doing it and they don’t have the depth our industry does)
Robyn’s advice to young accountants (and to all of us!)
The three major challenges Robyn forsees for the industry
Her top tips for accountants going forwards
Why Sam and Robyn love the accounting industry and accounting professionals
Quotes
“Areas like emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, yes they maybe the buzzwords. But people that are better able to connect with others, that have empathy, that can resolve conflicts, that can approach situations with a greater degree of emotional intelligence are going to be able to handle those situations better and ideally come up with better outcomes.” ~ Robyn
“Whether it’s an accountant talking to their client in their office, whether it's a speaker at a conference, or whether it's someone on social media getting the messages out through blogs and posts, you need to understand your audience and you need to make sure that they understand your message.” ~ Robyn
“You can't get to know everybody. So you need to be really focused. You can't clear that message up until…you've got clearly focused on who it is and what you're talking about to.” ~ Sam
“Social media, it's something that it's not optional anymore. It's not frivolous, and it's not the space of a few IT nerds playing on the side. It's a core part of how we communicate, and social media builds trust, connections and establishes and maintains your own reputation.” ~ Robyon
“[Social media] is a scary place but we need to get out there and to get relevant and to get valued by our end users. And our end users are there and we can [start with] safer social media such as LinkedIn. Because if we don’t, others are, and they don't have the depth that we do. Accountants need to be in this space and we need to get over our discomfort.” ~ Sam
“When I was starting out, I used to look at my bosses and I thought they were really, really smart. Now, they were smart, but they were no smarter than me. What they had that I didn't have back then was experience.” ~ Robyn
“It is time that we need to shape our tax system so it can sustain us through the next 50 years. The Tax Institute is certainly leading the charge here and we're going to be having some great conversations in the months and years ahead about what we can do with this system. But it's got to be more robust. It's got to be more contemporary.” ~ Robyn
“I very rarely meet anyone [in the industry] who doesn't love what they do. But they feel so overwhelmed that they're just trying to get through their day.” ~ Sam
Links
Tax Institute Go for Growth program
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