Tax attorney job description template: duties, requirements and pay range

A tax attorney posting has five working parts: the tax workload the seat owns, the bar admission you require, the skills and systems the work runs on, a good-faith pay range with benefits, and how to apply.

Each gets its own block in the template below.

If you are still deciding what the seat needs — which workload, what level, where to look — our guide to how to hire a tax attorney covers the decisions before the posting; this page is about writing it.

And for the mechanics that hold for any role — structure, length, where candidates actually read — our guide to writing a law firm job posting covers the craft.

Core duties and responsibilities.

Write the workload a candidate can picture, not adjectives: the tax work the seat owns, the clients it serves, how far into each matter the hire carries it, and who they answer to.

The workloads are different jobs — planning (structuring transactions and writing the analysis that keeps a position defensible), controversy (defending a position after a taxing authority challenges it) and estate-tax work (where estates and tax meet) — so name the one your docket actually runs.

Duties worth a line on the posting:

• Researching and drafting the analysis behind tax positions — the memos and opinions a client can act on and a reviewer can follow
• [Planning mix:] structuring transactions, entities and reorganizations and drafting the documents that carry the plan
• [Controversy mix:] representing clients in examinations and disputes before the IRS and, where your mix includes it, in U.S. Tax Court proceedings
• [Estate-tax mix:] advising on gifts, estates and fiduciary income tax, including return positions and elections
• Counseling clients on options, exposure and what to expect at each step
• Supervising the paralegals and legal assistants who support the caseload
• [Carrying billable, caseload or filing-season expectations — state them as the firm's own numbers]

One boundary shapes the duties block: the work has to sit inside the forums and jurisdictions where the hire is authorized to practice.

ABA Model Rule 5.5(a) bars a lawyer from practicing law in a jurisdiction in violation of its regulation of the profession, or assisting another in doing so — and the "assist" clause is the firm's exposure, not just the lawyer's.

These are the ABA's model rules; the version your state adopted controls, so confirm the wording that fits with your state bar's ethics counsel.

Where the hire sits — out-of-state and remote arrangements — is the licensing discussion in our how-to-hire guide above; write the posting's location line to match the arrangement you have actually cleared.

Qualifications and bar admission.

The baseline comes first: per the BLS, lawyers typically need a law degree and a state license, which usually requires passing a bar examination.

Write the requirement as "[State] bar admission in good standing" — the state where your office sits and where you expect the hire to practice — and verify it at the source.

The ABA says lawyers are licensed by a state agency in each state, that agency can confirm whether a person has a law license and may practice there, and the ABA keeps a state-by-state directory of those agencies — in New Hampshire and South Dakota, the directory says you call the bar association.

A resume line is not a license check; run it yourself before you rely on the credential, and again before the start date.

Tax practice adds forum questions specific to the work, and two of them are worth a line of their own.

Practice before the IRS runs on Circular 230 (31 CFR 10.3): attorneys and CPAs not under suspension or disbarment may practice before the IRS by filing a written declaration, and enrolled agents may also practice.

The U.S. Tax Court runs its own admission: attorneys are admitted on a certificate of good standing issued within 90 days of applying, while nonattorneys can be admitted only by passing the Court's nonattorney examination (Tax Court Rule 200).

For the posting, that means naming the forums your mix actually reaches — an IRS-facing controversy seat and a planning seat are different jobs — and treating a forum admission as its own verification item, checked at the source when a matter calls for it, rather than a resume line that travels with the state bar card.

Decide what you will accept and write exactly that.

A requirement as broad as "tax experience" does not tell a candidate which of those jobs the seat is; name the workload and the seniority instead.

The accounting-depth credential is yours to define: require a CPA license or an LL.M. in taxation only if your matters genuinely need it, write it into the posting as a requirement, and verify it with the issuing body the same way you verify admission — a credential you did not require should not screen anyone out.

If you would hire a graduate who is not yet admitted, be careful twice over: what your state lets an unadmitted graduate do was not verified in our research, so confirm with your state's admitting authority before you post — and know the title rule, because a lawyer not admitted in a jurisdiction must not hold out or represent that they are admitted to practice law there (ABA Model Rule 5.5(b)(2)).

The candidate-side view of the practice — the licensing path, the training, where tax lawyers work — is in our tax attorney career guide.

Skills and software.

Name the systems your firm actually runs — tax research libraries, document management for long memo files, practice management and billing — and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train.

The non-software skills in this practice are specific: written analysis a reviewer can follow and a client can act on, precision with the numbers and filing mechanics behind a position, deadline control across filing seasons, and the ability to explain a technical position to a non-specialist without losing the substance.

Name the real stack and the real expectations; "strong organizational skills" tells a candidate nothing about the systems the work runs on or the standard the writing has to meet.

Pay range and benefits.

Anchor the range in your market and your budget, then adjust for the duties you wrote above.

The broadest figure in our research is the federal wage survey: in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2025 release, lawyers (SOC 23-1011) had a national median annual wage of $159,670 ($76.76 per hour), with the 10th percentile at $78,360 and the 90th percentile at about $351,600 (BLS footnotes values of $239,200 and above, so read the top of that spread as approximate) — the spread of the whole profession, not a floor and a cap for your hire.

Our research found no tax-only series inside the survey, so those are all-lawyer figures; in the same release, lawyers in the Legal Services industry (law firms, NAICS 5411) had a median annual wage of $157,870 — the read closest to the law-firm market your posting competes in.

OEWS excludes self-employed lawyers, so it measures the wage-earning market, not what firm owners take home.

State-by-state figures sit on our tax attorney salary page, and the sector and geography cuts are the benchmarking discussion in our how-to-hire guide above.

Whatever range you post should be one you believe — and in the jurisdictions listed below, each verified from statute or the state agency, the law puts pay information in the posting itself: California (employers with 15 or more employees, which must also give the pay scale to any third party that posts for them), Washington (15 or more; wage scale or salary range plus a general description of benefits, in effect since January 1, 2023), Illinois (15 or more; pay scale and benefits, with a hyperlink allowed), Minnesota (30 or more employees in the state; starting salary range and a benefits description, and ranges may not be open-ended), Massachusetts (25 or more in the state; effective October 29, 2025), New York State (four or more employees), New York City (since November 1, 2022), Colorado (compensation and benefits in postings), Connecticut (effective October 1, 2026) and Virginia (the wage, salary or range in each posting).

California also requires the pay scale on an applicant's reasonable request regardless of employer size, defines "pay scale" as a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly range the employer reasonably expects to pay on hire, and attaches penalties of $100 to $10,000 per violation.

Nevada works differently: the wage or salary range goes to an applicant who has completed an interview, not into the posting itself.

Other places have rules we did not read, and the thresholds move — check with your state labor agency before you post.

Two more blocks finish the posting.

The benefits block is where a small firm competes on honesty rather than size: list what you actually offer — health coverage, a retirement plan, paid time off, bar dues and CLE support, malpractice coverage — and state your volume expectations, including filing-season coverage and any billable or caseload target, as the firm's own numbers.

Our research surfaced no sourced market-wide billable figure for tax seats to copy, which is the second reason the number should be yours — and it should be one your calendar can keep.

Adapting the template for a small firm.

In a smaller firm the hire may be the whole tax practice, so write the breadth in honestly: the workload they will own, the clients they will counsel directly, the staff they will direct.

A named supervisor matters more, not less — "reports to the managing attorney" tells a candidate who reviews their positions and who they escalate to.

And post the range you actually budgeted; the benchmark above is an all-lawyers, wage-earning-market figure, and it is a map for your budget conversation, not a substitute for one.

Adapting for a practice mix.

Rewrite the duties bullets around the caseload you actually run.

A planning hire lives in transactions and opinions — structuring, drafting, and defending positions before they are ever challenged.

A controversy hire is forum-facing: examinations, administrative disputes and, where the matters go that far, proceedings in the U.S. Tax Court under its own admission process.

An estate-tax hire sits with fiduciary work — gifts, estates, return positions and the arguments that follow them.

Let the requirements block follow the same logic: ask for experience with the kind of matters your firm takes, not "tax experience" in the abstract.

Adapting for the calendar.

If your matters cluster around filing and payment deadlines, say in the posting how the peak gets staffed — overflow matters, contract coverage, a second chair.

A deadline-heavy calendar is visible in the duties either way; the posting is where you set expectations about it, not the first week of the busy season.

Adapting for hybrid or remote days.

The license question follows the lawyer, not the desk.

Out-of-state and remote arrangements are the licensing discussion in our how-to-hire guide above — before you publish a hybrid line, confirm the arrangement fits your state's version of the practice rules with your state bar's ethics counsel.

Five wordings sink otherwise good tax postings.

Each is fixable before you hit publish.

1. Bar-admission wording that promises more than the hire may do.

ABA Model Rule 5.5(a) bars a lawyer from practicing law in a jurisdiction in violation of its regulation of the profession — and bars assisting another in doing so, the clause that reaches the firm.

Write the admission requirement as the state where the office sits, verify it with that state's licensing agency, and treat any out-of-state, remote or unadmitted-graduate arrangement as a confirm-with-your-ethics-counsel question before it goes into the posting.

For an unadmitted graduate the title rule applies from day one: Model Rule 5.5(b)(2) bars a lawyer not admitted in a jurisdiction from holding out or representing that they are admitted to practice law there, so the posting's title — and the hire's eventual bio and signature block — have to match the admission you actually verified.

What your state lets an unadmitted graduate do was not verified in our research; ask your state's admitting authority, not this template.

2. Preference wording that screens by who people are.

The EEOC says it is illegal to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for, or discourages applications from, people because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information — its own example is an ad seeking "recent college graduates," which may discourage people over 40 from applying.

A tax posting drifts into this less by intent than by shorthand: culture lines that describe a demographic, or requirements keyed to a life stage rather than a workload — the same discourage-by-who-people-are pattern the EEOC's example targets.

Write about the work.

Keep application questions to what is essential to decide whether a person is qualified — the EEOC treats questions about race, sex, national origin, age or religion as irrelevant to that decision — and treat the borderline ones as risky rather than harmless: federal law does not clearly forbid every such question, but the answers can be used as evidence of intent to discriminate unless justified by a business purpose.

The EEOC publishes separate guidance pages on specific pre-employment inquiries, worth reading before you build the application form, and an employer must provide an accommodation a disabled applicant needs to apply, unless it causes significant difficulty or expense.

3. Salary-history questions.

Several of the state laws we read restrict them.

California (Labor Code 432.3) bars all employers from seeking an applicant's salary history and from relying on it in hiring or pay decisions; New York (Labor Law 194-a) bars requesting it as a condition of being interviewed, considered, hired or promoted, and seeking it from a current or former employer; Illinois (820 ILCS 112) bars screening by it, requiring it for an interview or offer, and seeking it from employers; Massachusetts (G.L. c.149 §105A) bars seeking it from the candidate or their employers.

Connecticut bars asking a prospective employee's wage or salary history unless the applicant volunteers it, and Virginia and Nevada ban seeking salary history as well.

Ask for expectations instead — California's law expressly allows an employer to ask about salary expectations for the position, and an applicant who volunteers history without prompting may have it considered.

Other states and cities have rules we did not read, so check yours before the interview stage.

4. Conviction-history questions too early.

A tax firm is an employer first, and fair-chance timing rules apply to its own hiring like anyone else's.

California's Fair Chance Act (employers with five or more employees) bars asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer of employment, and New York City's Fair Chance Act makes it unlawful for most employers to ask about or consider criminal history before a conditional offer.

If your application form asks about criminal record, check your state and city law before you post — other states and cities have fair-chance rules this page does not cover.

5. Vague everything.

"Tax attorney wanted," no workload, no forums, no seniority, no range — an umbrella posting leaves a candidate guessing which job it is.

The fix is the template above: name the workload, the forums the work reaches, the stage a hire owns, and a range you believe.

After you post.

Set a review cadence before the posting goes live and hold to it — a slow reply reads as a closed door.

If the pay range or the duties change, update the posting rather than explaining the difference in interviews.

Prepare the interview the same way for every candidate — the same questions, the same structure, a scoring sheet — so comparisons stay fair and every question stays tied to the job.

And before yours goes up, browse the live tax attorney jobs on this board to see the pay framing and duty lists you are competing against.

This page is employer information, not legal advice. Posting laws, bar-admission rules, ethics rules and classification questions change and vary by jurisdiction — confirm them with your state labor agency, your state's admitting authority, employment counsel and your state bar's ethics counsel before you post.