Senior Payroll Tax Amendment Specialist

Who You Are

You are a highly skilled tax professional who executes and validates complex state tax amendments to drive operational excellence. You dependably execute complex and routine tasks to ensure client compliance and filing accuracy across all jurisdictions. This role involves cross-functional collaboration to resolve complicated data issues and includes direct communication with federal, state, and local tax authorities to research and resolve amended tax return issues. You serve as the team's subject matter expert on process execution and complex reconciliation, helping to ensure the integrity of the entire amendment workflow.

As the Senior Payroll Tax Amendment Specialist, you will be a subject matter expert in the daily operations and execution of tax amendments, driving operational excellence. You will dependably execute both routine and less typical tasks to ensure client compliance. This role involves cross-functional collaboration to resolve customer issues and communication with federal, state, and local jurisdictions, all while providing guidance and support to your team.

Your Success Profile

What You Will Work On:

• Data Validation and Reconciliation
  • Execute in-depth tax amendments and review adjustments to justify amendment filings and validate data sources. Focus on key variances, such as dollar value discrepancies or missing employees, between original and amended returns.
  • Perform robust reconciliation for amended quarters, ensuring new workbooks clearly tie out to original filings and include complete employee-level reconciliation tabs.
  • Reconcile original tax filings, payments, and amendment reports within the tax management software against actual state submissions, ensuring accuracy and addressing historical discrepancies.
  • Accurately complete standardized templates within workbooks for capturing all necessary amendment-related information.
  • Collaborate closely with accounting, legal, and compliance teams to ensure all amendment filings adhere to regulatory requirements and internal policies.
  • Implement and maintain robust data validation checks to identify and correct discrepancies proactively, minimizing the need for future amendments.
  • Develop and refine reconciliation processes to ensure seamless integration of data across various systems and accurate reporting.
  • Regularly audit data sources and reconciliation workbooks to guarantee data integrity and compliance with evolving tax regulations.

• Process Execution and Triage
  • Create and file amended returns as needed using the payroll tax software across all Federal, State & Local jurisdictions as needed. This includes W2C’s and amended 1099’s (NEC and MISC).
  • Execute the amendment filing lifecycle from end-to-end, including rigorous workbook review, tax management software posting, and final filing preparation and submission. This involves managing the entire process of preparing and submitting tax amendments, ensuring accuracy and compliance at each stage.
  • Develop and utilize a common error cheat sheet to efficiently triage and resolve the high volume of reconciliation issues and error logs from tax management and payroll software. Create and maintain a quick reference guide to identify and fix common errors, streamlining the troubleshooting process for discrepancies found in tax and payroll systems.
  • Manually retrieve and merge legacy multi-file exports from payroll systems to reconstruct historical files, which are vital for tie-outs and audit trails. Access, combine, and organize older payroll data from various sources to create complete historical records, essential for reconciling accounts and supporting audits.
  • Research, resolve, and follow up on amended tax return issues with taxing jurisdictions and internal teams. Investigate and resolve problems related to amended tax returns by communicating with relevant tax authorities and internal departments, ensuring timely and accurate resolution.
  • Apply embedded formulas to automatically calculate tax implications, penalties, or other financial adjustments, and to validate data entries against predefined rules. Utilize built-in formulas within spreadsheets or software to automatically determine financial impacts such as taxes, penalties, or adjustments, and to verify the accuracy of data input based on established guidelines.

• Documentation and Compliance
  • Adhere to and maintain Tax Amendment Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), including Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for work completion.
  • Assist the Team Lead in capturing and documenting unrecorded core logic, error handling, and reconciliation processes observed during the amendment workflow.
  • Ensure all workbook sections, including the dedicated tax amendment log are accurately maintained and auditable.
  • Adhere to new internal policies for handling critical compliance issues.
  • Maintain an internal resource center for payroll tax policies and procedures by contributing documentation and best practices.

How You Will Do Your Work

As the Senior Payroll Tax Amendment Specialist, how results are achieved is paramount for your success and ultimately results in our success as an organization. In this role, your effectiveness will be grounded in the following competencies: 

• Detail-oriented: You bring rigor and precision to your work. You’re thorough, organized, and proactive in identifying both the root causes of issues and their downstream impact. 
• Adaptability: You are flexible in the face of shifting priorities or ambiguity. You’re able to recalibrate workflows and support your team through change without losing momentum. 
• Good Judgment: You are solution-oriented and approach challenges with curiosity. You assess risks, connect patterns, weigh trade-offs, and take ownership for outcomes, not just activity. 
• Clear Communication: You communicate with clarity and purpose, whether in writing, pod/team meetings, or in 1:1s. You know when to listen, when to lead, and how to ensure alignment across the team and with leadership.
• Systems Thinking: You see the big picture. You recognize how people, processes, and timelines interact—and use that understanding to optimize how your pod operates as part of a larger whole. 

In addition, all Justworkers focus on aligning their behaviors to our core values known as COGIS. It stands for:

• Camaraderie: Day to day you can be seen working together toward a higher purpose. You like to have fun. You’re an active listener, treat people respectfully, and have a strong desire to know and help others.
• Openness: Your default is to be open. You're willing to share information, understand other perspectives, and consider new possibilities. You’re curious, ask open questions, and are receptive to thoughts and feedback from others.
• Grit: You demonstrate grit by having the courage to commit and persevere. You’re committed, earnest, and dive in to get the job done well with a positive attitude.
• Integrity: Simply put, do what you say and say what you'll do. You’re honest and forthright, have a strong moral compass, and strive to match your words with your actions while leading by example.
• Simplicity: Be like Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Qualifications

• Minimum of 2+ years in a payroll tax environment,
• Demonstrated advanced proficiency in Excel and/or Google Sheets, utilizing VLOOKUP and other data manipulation functions for effective data management, is required.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complex processes clearly
• Process-driven and highly organized, with the ability to adapt in a fast-paced environment. 
• Technologically savvy; experience with utilizing multiple systems and software programs to manage work and drive execution.
• Experience executing on  multi-state tax accounts and tax amendments across multiple employers or for a single large employer.
• Demonstrating expertise with quarterly and year-end filing cycles is a plus.
• Tax compliance, licensing, auditing experience and familiarity with multi-state tax portals, a plus

The base wage range for this position based in our New York City Office is targeted at $97,000.00 - $106,700.00.

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