International Tax Decision Operating Model Director

The mandate

This project will design and prove an operating model for material international-tax decisions. The bounded problem is that matters enter tax through inconsistent routes and can reach legal, finance or business commitment before facts, alternatives and reserved authority are clear. The deliverable must enable timely, recorded decisions without centralising every technical question.

Milestone one, due in week five, is an accepted decision inventory and failure analysis across selected residence, permanent-establishment, withholding, financing, transfer-pricing and minimum-tax cases. Milestone two, at month three, is the future-state intake, evidence, authority, escalation and record design, including service standards by decision class.

Milestone three, due in month six, is a live pilot using at least four contrasting decisions, with lead time, rework, authority and closure measured. The final milestone is the accepted handbook, decision templates, training assessment, control report and residual backlog. The Chief Tax Officer accepts technical governance; the designated finance executive accepts decision integration and service operation.

The client provides recent decision papers, authority matrices, process evidence, selected live cases and access to tax, finance, legal and operational owners. Acceptance requires timely pilot decisions, complete evidence routes, correct reserved approval, closed critical defects and trained internal operators. Technical policy rewriting, transaction execution, filings and system build are excluded.

What you will own

• Catalogue material international-tax decision classes, entry routes, evidence, dependencies, authority, lead time and recurring failure.
• Define intake criteria that distinguish advice, technical approval, risk acceptance, implementation and monitoring requests.
• Design evidence gates and escalation paths based on consequence, uncertainty, reversibility and remaining decision time.
• Establish authority matrices that preserve local responsibility while identifying central and board-reserved decisions.
• Create decision records separating facts, interpretation, alternatives, financial effect, recommendation, approval and revisit trigger.
• Pilot the model through four live cases and measure rework, time to decision, unresolved ownership and implementation closure.
• Assess internal operators through a compressed-timeline case and a cross-function disagreement scenario.
• Deliver accepted artifacts, pilot evidence, training results, limitations and ownership of the residual backlog.

Candidate qualifications

• At least 16 years in international tax leadership, including Director-level operating-model or governance design.
• A tax decision process you rebuilt after proving that late involvement or unclear authority caused material rework.
• Breadth across residence, permanent establishments, withholding, financing, transfer pricing and minimum tax.
• Experience distinguishing technical approval, risk acceptance and implementation ownership in complex cross-functional choices.
• Evidence of piloting a governance model through live decisions and changing design after observed failure.
• Ability to preserve local tax responsibility while reducing unnecessary central escalation.
• Fixed-project completion through separate tax and finance acceptance, operator testing and residual transfer.

Working terms and boundaries

• The seven-month project uses three days a week and releases fees through four artifact-based acceptance milestones.
• The Chief Tax Officer accepts technical governance; the finance executive separately accepts decision integration and service performance.
• Current processes, decision records, live cases and owner access are dated client dependencies.
• Policy rewriting, transaction execution, filings and technology implementation remain outside the project fee.
• Final acceptance requires completed live pilots, closed critical defects, tested operators and explicit residual-backlog ownership.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 12 October 2026. Mandate reference TAX-CON-2026-RUH-68.