Audit Committee Tax Risk Adviser — National Control Quality and Assurance Challenge

The mandate

An audit committee wants to know whether completed tax filings and reported remediation actually demonstrate control over its Indian exposure. Management packs count actions closed but do not consistently explain how evidence was tested, why the same exceptions recur or which weaknesses can distort a material position. A ten-month adviser will challenge that assurance from 26 October 2026. The standing question concerns control quality across national tax operations, not a second approval route for individual returns or a mandate to lower the group's effective tax charge.

Your perspective will connect direct-tax, GST, withholding and intercompany control evidence without treating all exceptions as equally important. A late document can be a local process defect; a systematically unsupported transaction description can undermine several positions at once. You will help the chair ask what management has proved, what remains assumed and whether closure criteria address the original cause. Internal assurance retains its independent testing role. The adviser interprets the significance of that evidence for committee oversight rather than recreating the test population or directing an alternative audit programme.

Five days each month are reserved for pack examination, two working discussions and a written challenge note. Quarterly audit-committee attendance is included with no duplicate meeting charge; extra investigative work requires a separately agreed scope. A complete ad-hoc request receives a reasoned response within three business days and acknowledgement by the next working day. The chair considers renewal at the ten-month review, with a further term subject to committee approval. Two non-competing engagements can coexist if the reserved capacity and information segregation remain credible throughout the appointment.

The adviser has no line authority and no executive responsibility, and is not offered a board seat or fiduciary office. Tax executives approve positions, management remediates controls and directors decide what risk to accept. Interests in a competing operator, a current tax-service provider or a transaction under review must be disclosed before access. Documented recusal, restricted packs or withdrawal will apply where independent challenge cannot be protected. You will neither represent the group before authorities nor certify universal compliance; your contribution is a precise account of what the assurance evidence does and does not support.

What you will own

• Challenge closure claims against subsequent transaction evidence, asking whether the original tax-control cause has been removed or merely documented differently in a pack that now reports fewer open actions.
• Test the committee significance of recurring exceptions across direct tax, GST and withholding, identifying common factual weaknesses that can undermine several positions despite apparently separate compliance calendars.
• Recommend assurance questions that distinguish source reliability, technical interpretation and execution failure, helping directors avoid a generic risk rating that conceals fundamentally different decisions and accountable owners.
• Press management on remediation prioritisation using exposure and recurrence, shaping oversight of material weaknesses without issuing instructions to tax staff or displacing internal assurance's independent testing method.
• Review the evidence behind national tax certifications and committee comfort, highlighting qualifications that should remain visible where management relies on incomplete reconciliation, adviser assumptions or untested operating behaviour.
• Counsel the chair on residual-risk discussion and follow-up, preserving a clear distinction between accepted uncertainty and unsupported reassurance while leaving approval, filing and control execution with existing executives.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate deep Indian tax-control and audit experience spanning several of direct tax, GST, withholding and transfer pricing. Describe a remediation claim you challenged because administrative closure did not remove the underlying risk. Explain the transaction evidence, technical consequence and oversight decision you influenced, rather than relying on the number of actions tracked or certifications collected as proof of assurance quality.
• Bring twenty-two to twenty-eight years of tax or senior finance-tax experience, with rigorous professional knowledge and national multi-entity exposure. You must recognise when one factual weakness affects several compliance streams and when apparently similar exceptions need different specialist responses. Strong judgement about materiality and recurrence is required; the role does not treat every missed document as a board-level failure.
• Evidence constructive advisory work with audit committees, owners or senior assurance forums where you influenced scrutiny without taking executive control. Show how you communicated uncertainty, challenged a technical sponsor and retained the limits of available evidence in the record. Familiarity with qualified advisers and internal audit should support collaboration while preserving management's responsibility for technical positions and remedial execution.
• Reserve five monthly days, quarterly attendance and the stated response window, with secure working practices for sensitive entity and dispute information. Disclose relevant financial interests and advisory-provider relationships early enough for meaningful recusal. You should be willing to decline conflicted review, develop proportionate questions and remain useful when the committee chooses to accept a risk you would personally handle more cautiously.

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 9 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-ADV-2026-IND-034.