Senior Tax Associate

About this role

Senior Tax Associate | R.D. Barnett PLLC
Compensation$80,000-$105,000, depending on experience, credentials, and demonstrated capabilityStart dateTarget start date of no later than January 5, 2027LocationRemote within approved U.S. work locationsSharp tax work. An accounting brain. A soft spot for better systems.
Job postings are funny
They are often part wish list, part sales pitch, and part collection of phrases no human has ever used in conversation. That does not tell you what the work feels like, who you will work with, or whether you will actually enjoy being here. We would rather be honest, so here is the real story.
About R.D. Barnett PLLC
R.D. Barnett PLLC is a Seattle-based tax, accounting, and advisory firm founded by Dean Barnett to help entrepreneurs, privately held businesses, and individuals make smarter financial decisions. We work alongside our clients to understand what they are building, how their businesses operate, and how their financial decisions connect.
Our clients include closely held businesses, professional service firms, real estate owners, entrepreneurs, and the individuals and families behind them. Their needs often span business operations, multiple entities, related real estate, and personal tax planning. We connect those pieces so clients can understand their numbers, spot opportunities earlier, and make confident decisions.
A growing focus of our firm is PracticeDen, our veterinary-focused tax, accounting, and advisory service line. We work with independent veterinary practices and their owners, helping them understand their numbers, navigate tax decisions, and build businesses that support their goals. From opening or acquiring a practice to growing an established one or planning a transition, we connect the financial details to the bigger picture. We also continue to serve clients beyond the veterinary industry.
This role has a functional home in Tax and works with accounting, advisory, and client-service teammates across the firm. The goal is bigger than accurate filings. We want the business, related entities, and owner’s individual return to tell one coherent story, with practical advice clients can actually use.
The Role (and Why It’s Interesting)
We are looking for an experienced, hard-working, and self-motivated Senior Tax Associate who can prepare a wide variety of returns, hand off thoughtful, reviewer-ready work, and help us make tax season run a little smarter. You will work across entity and individual clients, often following the numbers across an operating business, related entities and real estate, and the owner’s personal return.
You will own day-to-day execution, workpaper quality, status visibility, and early issue identification. Tax Managers will set technical direction, approve material positions, and help you grow toward greater independence, planning exposure, client leadership, and review responsibility.
Tax preparation is the main event. You will gather information, build workpapers, prepare calculations and returns, support planning, handle e-filing and delivery, research unusual issues, and help resolve notices or other technical projects. In other words: you will do real tax work from beginning to end, not spend your days moving numbers from one box to another without understanding why.
This is also not a stay-in-your-lane-forever role. While traditional accounting work won’t be your primary responsibility, a strong accounting brain is essential. You should be able to read a trial balance, understand the financial statements, reconcile important accounts, propose adjustments, and recognize when the accounting needs attention before a return can move forward. Recurring bookkeeping is not part of this role unless separately assigned and scoped.
As R.D. Barnett grows, this role can grow with it. We do not expect you to know every answer. We do expect you to be genuinely inquisitive with a solution-driven purpose: ask better questions, trace the issue to its source, and move toward a sensible answer. Curiosity about how businesses operate and how tax decisions affect their owners is essential.
What You’ll Actually Do
Make tax work look easy

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Prepare the returns. All kinds of them. That includes federal, state, and local returns for individuals and closely held entities, with a core mix of Forms 1040, 1065, 1120-S, and 1120. It may also include trusts and estates, related real estate entities, and other returns as assigned.

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Make review a pleasant experience. Build clean, complete workpapers with clear support, reconciliations, calculations, notes, and tie-outs. Your reviewer should not need detective training to follow your work.

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Follow the financial trail. Connect business, related-entity, real estate, and individual filings so every related return tells the same story.

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Bring an accounting brain to the return. Reconcile balance-sheet accounts, retained earnings, fixed assets, basis, owner activity, payroll, sales or excise tax, and other book-to-tax items that are part of the engagement.

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Know what went into the software. Enter and validate tax data, carryforwards, fixed assets, prior-year items, and current-year activity in UltraTax CS or a comparable platform.

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Raise your hand early. Spot missing information, inconsistencies, unusual issues, capacity concerns, and potential deadline problems before they become deadline-day surprises.

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See the process through. Help with extensions, estimates, e-filing, secure delivery, tax notices, and the less-glamorous details that still have to be right.

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Know when the work has changed. Recognize services outside the agreed scope and bring them to a manager before committing to additional work, fees, or timing.

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Support planning without freelancing. Identify potential planning opportunities, research assigned questions, document the facts and authority, and bring clear recommendations and unresolved questions to the manager.

Use technology like you mean it

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Make…