Senior Tax Manager | Corporate Support

Lyst offers a unique opportunity to work on a premium shopping platform, which is both a trusted partner to the world’s leading fashion brands and a global consumer-facing product. Over 150 million people use the Lyst app and website each year to shop an assortment of 8 million items via a highly personalised experience. Lyst is a scale-up environment, combining an agile mentality with a proven business model and over a decade of experience. This provides a balance between foundations and structure, and autonomy and pace. Our goal is to be the category leading destination for every fashion shopper.

Data and technology sit at the heart of everything we do, and we firmly believe that we can only meet our goals by prioritising our team and culture. We give our people the freedom to drive impact and shape the future of our company, within a diverse, inclusive and high-trust environment. We don’t rely on prescriptive rules, policies and procedures to drive results. We trust the judgement and ownership of our team, and prioritise learning and career development, knowing that our success is only possible thanks to our people. Lyst was founded in London in 2010, and has raised over $160m from leading investors including Accel, Balderton, Molten Ventures, Fidelity International, and LVMH.

We are looking to hire a qualified tax professional with in-house experience specialising in indirect tax to manage our tax responsibilities. This is a great opportunity for the right individual to make a mark in a small but high performing team in a fast paced environment. As a team, we focus on ensuring our reporting is robust through effective controls, whilst constantly looking to iterate and improve our processes, to maintain our position as an industry leading department. As the pioneer of Lyst’s tax function you will have complete ownership across the company’s tax landscape and have a real impact on how it develops; setting up a best practice function with a goal of outstanding tax governance and global compliance. As Lyst’s tax expert you will get the opportunity to work with all taxes, both indirect and direct, covering VAT, sales tax, corporation tax, R&D, DST and employment taxes.

Responsibilities:

• Be responsible for Lyst’s tax compliance:
  • Complete annual UK tax filings including the UK corporation tax return, R&D claim and employee benefit filings; and
  • Liaise with US tax advisors to file annual US tax returns for the group; and
  • Ensure global compliance through reviewing and filing multi-jurisdiction VAT and sales and use tax returns; and
  • Perform controls testing on existing processes.
• Manage external relationships with professional tax advisors and software providers:
  • Review all external work performed by external tax advisors; and
  • Reconcile outputs between integrated tax and accounting softwares; and
  • Maintain strong relationships with tax advisors and software providers, ensuring these meet the business needs in the most cost effective way.
• Setup and manage documentation and policies around tax governance and compliance:
  • Challenge existing systems, processes and controls to ensure tax legislation is being correctly interpreted and followed; and
  • Create and implement policies for effective tax compliance; and
  • Write and maintain documentation on tax governance; and
  • Stay up to date on global tax legislation and report on key changes to the wider business.
• Business partner with internal stakeholders:
  • Ensure that tax is a key focus area for business decisions, working alongside other business leaders to inform them of tax implications; and
  • Ensure that the business is set up to optimise for tax, where possible, rather than being seen as a blocker or a hindrance; and
  • Have an understanding of tax transformation, being able to partner with different disciplines to integrate softwares and implement cross-functional processes.

Requirements

We're a high-performance, open and honest team, always pushing to learn and develop. We believe the right person for this role will:

• Be an autonomous self starter: a self driven individual who sets and delivers against self set deadlines and creates their own structure without needing direction.
• Be a confident decision maker: able and willing to find out the best solution and acts accordingly, taking the organisation's costs and benefits into account.
• Enjoy being the expert: business partnering with a range of stakeholders from all functions and seniorities to provide the best advice to Lysters.
• Create structure out of unstructure: can correctly prioritise multiple issues and opportunities whilst processing large amounts of data from disparate sources and can create robust and replicable frameworks, systems and processes from scratch.
• Be resilient: a tenacious individual who keeps going when things are hard and doesn’t give up easily;
• Be optimistic: believes it’s possible; an individual who tackles problems and takes independent action, seeking out new responsibilities, acting on opportunities, generating new ideas and practising self-development.

We are looking for someone who:

• Is a qualified tax advisor with CTA/ATT or equivalent, and preferably also a chartered accountant with ACA/ACCA qualification or equivalent
• Is a specialist in indirect tax, with a good knowledge of direct tax legislation
• Has at least 4 years experience in a professional services firm
• Has at least 2 years experience of working in a tax function in-house, with a focus on indirect tax
• Is a clear written communicator

Benefits

• Flexible Working: Our flexible working approach offers a high degree of freedom and autonomy. Individuals are provided with the discretion to work remotely on a regular basis, with an expectation that a reasonable proportion of time is spent in the office to enhance in-person collaboration. If due to unique circumstances this doesn’t quite work, we are open to listening to what will.
• Time Off: In addition to the 8 statutory bank holidays, you will receive 29 holidays per year. Lyst’s holiday year runs from 1 April to 31 March.
• Competitive Family Leave Package: This includes Enhanced Family Leave for those eligible, paid Time off for Dependents and Support for Fertility Treatment & Loss.
• Clothing Benefit: We want you to enjoy using the Lyst app and site as much as our customers, so we provide you with a clothing allowance to use on Lyst every year. This starts at £250 when you join and increases up to £1,000 with your length of service.
• Private Healthcare: Our healthcare provider is Vitality. Your health is important to us which is why we offer all employees a comprehensive healthcare scheme from the day you start.
• Training Allowance: We’re big on continuous learning and growth, so all employees are currently entitled to an annual training allowance of £1,000. This can be used to attend conferences, industry events, training courses and to purchase resources.
• Pension Scheme: Our pension provider is The People’s Pension. We offer a minimum employee contribution of 5% and 3% employer contribution.
• Eye Tests and Vouchers: Employees can make a saving on their eye test and glasses through our chosen provider. You’ll receive a free eye test every year and a discount towards glasses.
• Cycle-to-Work Scheme: Lyst will purchase a bicycle from your chosen retailer, you will then receive a voucher to pick up your bicycle from them.
• Transport Season Ticket Loan: Employees can apply for an interest free season ticket loan to support your travel to work.
• Social Events: Frequent company wide social events including Christmas & summer parties, sports days, themed drinks, quizzes, cook alongs, as well as smaller team socials. We also have plenty of interest based groups such as football, running club, book club, culinary and more.

We want to build a world where fashion works for everyone, and we want teams that are just as inclusive. Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture at Lyst. We recognise and celebrate the value and impact diversity brings to our company and are committed to ensuring this is a consistent focus, for which we are held to account. We are committed to treating all applicants fairly and equally, and encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply for this role. We are happy to talk about flexible working arrangements.

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Lyst we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.