In this episode of Controllers Classified, Erik Zhou sits down with Michael Williams, a Tax Partner at PwC, to unpack both his career path to Partnership and his firm’s POV on corporate tax strategies in 2025 and beyond.
In this episode of Controllers Classified, Erik Zhou sits down with Michael Williams, a Tax Partner at PwC, to unpack both his career path to Partnership and his firm’s POV on corporate tax strategies in 2025 and beyond.
Michael begins by sharing key milestones in his time at PWC, noting how his perspective, role, and scope shifted as he worked towards becoming a Partner at the firm. He underscores the importance of real value creation for clients and notes that if you’re in the business of service and advice, it has to be quality and actionable.
He then pivots to sharing why companies need to embed a tax perspective into their strategic planning. Erik and Michael cover upcoming changes in the tax landscape and what companies should be prepare for, underscoring that thinking about tax proactively instead of reactively isn’t just smart—it’s essential.
Michael closes with his funniest business travel story. It may involve a cat on the loose. Tune in to get all the details!
Key Quotes
Time Stamps
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0:00:01.5 Announcer: Welcome to Controllers Classified. The podcast where we take a deep dive into the dynamic world of controllers, accountants and finance leaders. And hear how their ever evolving roles are redefining accounting, and the future of business. And now, here's your host, Erik Zhou.
0:00:24.0 Erik Zhou: Welcome to Controllers Classified. I'm your host, Erik Zhou. I'm the Chief Accounting Officer at Brex. And today I have a really, really special guest from my old days at my firm, PwC, Michael Williams. He's a tax partner in the San Francisco practice. Welcome to the show.
0:00:42.0 Michael Williams: It's a pleasure being here. I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to hopefully making all of my tax brethrens proud today.
0:00:50.1 Erik Zhou: You were one of the first people I met when I moved to San Francisco back in 2015. We were on a FinTech client together at the. I was still a young manager and I had yet to fully appreciate all of the nuances and intricacies and sometimes backwards rules of the IRS tax code, just to be honest. And I think there's a huge component of, now that I'm in industry and I'm at Brex, of what I do every day, that's related to tax. I care about it. It's one of the actually most economically impactful things to the company from my position. And so, your journey must have been a story, so to speak, to make it the partner. Maybe just tell our listeners a little bit about that, to give them a view.
0:01:43.7 Michael Williams: Yeah, I think that the journey itself is, has a lot of bumpy roads to it, a lot of tears shed, what have you. But, I think there's a lot of different aspects to it. And again, I think the biggest thing that I would say is, like anyone else, when I got out of college, going into the tax profession, it was never a, this is gonna be my life's journey. And I think that's what's kind of kept it interesting is the fact that there are so many different aspects to tax. There's so many different avenues that you can take down and just being able to add that value, especially to the clients that I work on now. As well as, past relationships that I've had throughout the firm, have really added to just being able to develop those relationships and also just grow as a tax professional.
0:02:34.8 Erik Zhou: I think you were transferred into PwC from another firm, is that right?
0:02:38.3 Michael Williams: That's correct. That's correct. So I came in as a senior associate. So I had worked at tax and that was part of the journey. And I think that, most I was in public accounting for a few years. I got out of public accounting or right into public accounting right out of college in 2008. Wasn't the best time from a market perspective. Was really big into finance at the time. And so about three or four years into public accounting and tax, I decided that I wanted to do something else and kind of expand my horizons. So I had left and did financial advising for enough time to realize that I felt like I could add a lot more value in the, as a tax professional.
0:03:24.4 Erik Zhou: I know that about you. You were a financial advisor?
0:03:26.7 Michael Williams: That's right. That's right.
0:03:27.9 Erik Zhou: One of the things that I really picked up on, when I left the firm, and I left the firm six years ago, I was at the firm for 11 years just for the audience to know a little bit about my background. But being in the industry, when you're doing accounting at the firm, you're providing services to your clients. And you're one of the service providers. You're basically the product. I was the product that PwC was providing to it's clients. And I never got to see, I got to see more and more of that, the picture of the business of PwC, as I was promoted and grew up in the company. But I never saw as big of a picture of the business side of things as I do now. Now that I'm at Brex. And so, I guess I have a two-part question for you. Tell me about your growth into the partnership and how important the business side of it, is or isn't. And then now that you're in the partnership, is there a different lens that you see how operations are run in the company?
0:04:29.8 Michael Williams: When you go to the store, you buy a gallon of milk, you have a gallon of milk you take home. It's a product. You know how much is in that gallon. You may or may not know how it tastes, but basically your value is based on drinking that milk and how much milk is in there, and what have you wear? A lot of time the services that we're providing are advice. And it's not always just a completion of an aspect of your business, but it's a vice direction that you're taking. And I think that piece of it, as I've grown, as I continue to grow, as I enter into the partnership, there's kind of creating that value and understanding what that value means. Is an important aspect of what we do. And so as we have conversations with different clients, as we are out in the market, talking about creating that value and making sure that we bring the best, in delivering that value, is an important aspect. And I would say that's the biggest thing that as I've grown through my career, I continued to think about is where can I create value and how do I create that value?
0:05:39.4 Erik Zhou: What you're talking about is, I think the product quality. And the advice that you're providing to clients, it has to be of such a quality that it fits their circumstances and really, like you're helping them solve problems, at the end of the day. I think that's the ultimate result that I want to get, or when I call in, I do work with you. A PwC is an advisor to Brex on the tax side. And what I've always appreciated is, there is a slight difference sometimes. And there in terms of, I don't wanna say product quality, but the different opinions and advice that I get from different people based on their perspectives and what they're seeing in the market and how it applies to me. So, for example, one of the things that you guys did, right when I started, was as a firm based out of San Francisco, we have a gross receipts tax.
0:06:35.8 Erik Zhou: That gets applied to companies with headquarters here. And at the time we were paying that tax, as a fintech company, or you're a financial services company or you're a technology company, there's actually a selection that you have to make for California itself when you file your taxes for California.
0:06:53.9 Erik Zhou: And, I think one of the things I first came to you was like, "Hey, I've never heard of this before. This is my first time doing tax." Actually doing tax, I wasn't you in my previous job. And you guys came and said, "Oh, let's look at the actual facts and circumstances of your operations." And you guys dug deep. You looked at, okay, I know you have a bunch of software engineers, but what's the actual revenue that you're earning? How do you think about and interpret the structure of your business when it comes down to the tax code? And actually, sure you're a technology company, but at the end of the day, all your revenue is really from financial services? You're earning interchange, you're earning deposits revenue, et cetera, et cetera. And so if that's true, then you're labeled as a financial corporation. And if you're labeled as a financial corporation in the state, while you may be subject to a higher state rate for your income tax, you're no longer subject to some of the local taxes like the San Francisco gross receipts tax. And that's just one of the things that I've always thought was super valuable that you guys did for me early on in my time at Brex.
0:08:04.9 Erik Zhou: How does the partnership structure impact day-to-day operations, and how you think about services that you're providing? So for example, maybe you have a client, maybe that client is getting into a situation or exploring an opportunity that's outside of your scope. You're in a partnership, so do you just like, "Okay, that's all good. We're all in, all the partners in the US are part of this member firm and therefore we all share in the spoils, so to speak. So I'll just hand you off to the right person." So to speak. Is that kind of how I would think about it if I were to approach a firm like yours?
0:08:42.3 Michael Williams: Yeah, of course. I think it's absolutely that mindset. I think it's a level deeper on the sense that the firm and the partnership and the partners in the partnership, understand that the client comes first and the needs of the client are the main focus point. And just being able to have a solution. Maybe it's not the solution because you don't work in the right industry, but knowing someone within the partnership that can help with that situation, is where the value is. It's not a one person firm, but it's a partnership across multiple partners where that's where the value is. Just being able to bring the breadth of the firm and being able to bring all of that knowledge together is kind of that key aspect that you're mentioning.
0:09:32.5 Erik Zhou: I wanna get into one of the main segment of this show, which is like just like your career path in general. We have mostly Chief Accounting Officers or other finance execs or controllers on the show from industry. All those folks, a lot of them, they come from Big Four. You're kind of one of the folks, only folks that have come on the show that stuck with it. You stuck with it? Long time, many busy seasons, many tax deadlines. I'd love to understand what your mentality was, throughout the process so to speak. And let's just be real, getting admitted into the partnership is a huge milestone. And so, congratulations on that. I think that happened this year? So huge congratulations.
0:10:23.4 Michael Williams: Last year, I guess now but, yeah.
0:10:25.9 Erik Zhou: I'd love to understand what your mentality was.
0:10:29.6 Michael Williams: Yeah. Well first say, hopefully this provides me some credibility is my wife is a controller. So I always have that connection where I have a soft spot for the accounting side. So, it's not all tax all the time. So we do have some good healthy debates at my house. But yeah, I think the biggest thing really is that I never really went in with the mindset of day one right out of college, as I mentioned, I'm gonna be a partner. It was kind of just the resiliency and focus on what's in front of me. And I would say, growing up and through college, I wrestled, so I had kind of that wrestler's mindset. And for those of you that don't follow wrestling, there's a lot of demands from a, what are you eating to? The long nights of exercising, losing weight and then demands of going out and competing. And I guess in some aspects I went from a kind of a physical demanding life to kind of a mentally demanding life.
0:11:39.8 Michael Williams: And I think a lot of times I always reminded myself as long as I got a hot meal and was able to drink as much water as I wanted, I was okay. And so each day I kind of just took that mindset and came in and told myself look, "Hey, today's a new day. What am I gonna learn?" Didn't spend as much time thinking about the hours or the late nights, but it was really just focusing on kind of that day-to-day establishing myself as a professional, building my relationships around me. And I'll say now, I think in the moment, I wouldn't necessarily say this, but it goes by a lot faster than you think when you're focused on the immediate, versus the long term results.
0:12:25.4 Erik Zhou: I love what you said there. When you wake up in the morning, okay, what am I gonna learn today? And that I feel like makes the experience richer? Ultimately you're just, you're in a knowledge-based industry. You and I, we're both in a knowledge-based profession. And this constant thought or whisper in the back of your head that if you're telling yourself in the morning, okay, what am I gonna learn today? Yes, you have a job, but it's also gonna expand and enrich like the value that you get out of it for yourself as well. And also make you more marketable, frankly. 'Cause you're just expanding your knowledge base. And so I really love what you said there. Were there any moments that you would say, help define you? What's an example of something in your career that really defined. Okay, I just did this. This is who Michael Williams is?
0:13:17.4 Michael Williams: That's a great question. I think there's a lot of moments. And again, I think it goes back to, I will touch on a specific moment more recently, but there's different aspects as you're going along where you're starting to develop your personal brand. And what does that mean? And as you go along, you have mentors, you have people that you work with, and each of those you pull a little bit from. And so, I think about it almost as, you're pulling a little piece of clay from each of the person that you're working with. And ultimately you come out and you're kind of molded into that person, based on those influences, leadership, mentorship, what have you through your time. And so, there's a lot of different transition periods where there was never a moment where I would say, this is who I am today, this is who I am right now. And this is the directional path that I'm going down. But I think it continues to evolve. And why I would say that is, I think most of you can still remember the COVID pandemic back in 2020.
0:14:26.2 Michael Williams: It wasn't too long ago. And I think at that moment in my career, it really hit me in the sense of, we continued to look so far and forward in advance and making these assumptions about, where business is going, where business is transforming to. And then you have this moment in time where everything stops. And that was a reflection of point on my life where it brought me back to focusing on the day-to-day and things are gonna change. And you can't control those things. And how do you still continue to be successful in an environment that's completely different than what you knew a month ago, two months ago? And how do you interact with your family, your colleagues, your life? How do you continue to keep moving that forward? And that was a pivotal moment of not necessarily kind of redefining myself, but reflecting and saying, what are my key values here, that I want to continue to focus on a day-to-day basis?
0:15:28.0 Erik Zhou: What I heard from you was the importance of agility. And yeah, and I use that work sometimes 'cause I do some finance work at the company now. And so I got to do this forecast and tie it into the operational plan. And it's all with a lot of qualitative credibility.
0:15:48.0 Erik Zhou: We worked with the go-to-market team. We're gonna hire this many people in sales. Those salespeople are gonna produce X, Y and Z revenue and other metrics for the company. And we need marketing spend to get the leads for those people. And then, oh, we need all this other overhead support to take on all these new clients. So there's all these capacity models that we have. And Mike Tyson might have said it best. You always have a plan until you get punched in the face. And that's for me at least in our business, it is like that a lot. We do have a plan, we have a directional strategy of what we want to go. But it's so crucial to maintain some level of agility in our operations and how we think about things. And that's one of the nice things about working at a company like Brex. We are a smaller company and therefore a little bit more nimble. But it sounds like for you in your work, you try to do that as best you can as well.
0:16:44.3 Michael Williams: Yeah, and absolutely. And I think to that point Erik, is that agility comes in different sizes. And I think even your larger financial institutions, your larger companies are still having to deal with that agility. And still having to... It becomes a lot more difficult when you have more heads, when you have more locations, more compliance requirements, more demands to be able to change things. But if you're not agile, you're not gonna be able to be successful in the long run.
0:17:18.6 Erik Zhou: So agility is a big part obviously of your growth at the firm. Maybe can you share a little bit more about the admission process? So when you're in the pipeline. And I'm sure like all the firms, like any firm, you're always looking out for folks that could be candidates for partnership. It's certainly across the Big Four, I'm assuming for all the mid-tier firms and many partnerships across the world in the country. What was the admission process like? What's the checklist, so to speak, that they might be looking for?
0:17:52.9 Michael Williams: Everybody's path is gonna be different, right? And my path was different than folks that I got admitted with, folks that got admitted the year before me, the years after me and what have you. And what I would say is, I think the biggest thing is to sum it up, it's a journey with different checkpoints of things that you're doing and making sure that you were developing and growing into a partner that's ready to support the firm. And taking it a step further is, the key aspect of that is not only, it's not a self serving prophecy. It's more of the fact that creating that development and creating that foundation, to where, the people behind you, the next generation, that the people coming out of college are building those solid key firm foundations, to be able to continue to grow the firm and to be able to continue to bring that value. And so it's important when you're going through the process to understand that sometimes it's not always about what you're doing that day, it's about how you're interacting with your clients, how you're interacting with your teams. How are you help building those teams, to make sure that you have successful resources and successful people that are gonna continue to grow.
0:19:18.0 Michael Williams: And so, the process in itself of, if you look at key characteristics, those can all depend. I think it just depends on, we have individuals that cover different aspects of tax, to the point of one size doesn't fit all, on the value that they bring to the partnership. But if you put them in a characteristic, it's really hard to basically bucket them out into kind of key characteristics.
0:19:48.6 Erik Zhou: One thing that I've heard about making partnership is, it's not a promotion, right? It's an admission. And there's a lot of judgment involved for that. And all the different qualities that someone might bring to all the different aspects of the firm's product, so to speak. And advice and services to it's clients are wide and varied and you need to fill all these needs that your clients want from you. And so, I think one thing that resonated with me, what you said, just said like, while you wake up every morning and you're thinking about okay, what is it that I'm gonna learn today? There's also this steady body of work that you've built in terms of your brand at the company, in terms of the teams that you've built that as you've become called manager, senior manager, director, you're obviously mentoring folks and managing teams. There's this body of work that you've done and I think that's super valuable and maybe that's part of what the firm is looking at in terms of like, all right this is a very valuable body of work. Let's make sure it gets properly labeled, so to speak, rewarded in another way. At least, that's how I like to think about it.
0:20:56.9 Michael Williams: Yeah no, I think that's spot on of just the, again it's making sure that we're establishing that value and that carries on consistently through each individual.
0:21:08.5 Erik Zhou: Maybe one more thing about your day in the life. What is it like now? You just made partner in the last six months. Anything different?
0:21:16.4 Michael Williams: There's a lot that's similar. There's a lot that's different. I would say that the differences is just the level of responsibility and ownership. But again, I think that part of that...
0:21:27.7 Erik Zhou: You're signing the thing, you're signing the tax returns.
0:21:29.8 Michael Williams: You're signing the tax returns.
0:21:31.1 Erik Zhou: As my preparer. Yeah.
0:21:33.5 Michael Williams: That's right. And so, I think that you're coached into being prepared. And so, it's not like a situation where you jump in day one and here you go. And so, as I mentioned, just on the path, all of these things are being developed. And so from a preparation perspective in what's different, it's hard to say on, 'cause it wasn't a day one, here's the difference. But it was a transition into this role. And the biggest thing is just that continual mindset. Like I said, I'm still focused on what am I learning today? How are we developing staffs? How am I spending time with my individual clients, making sure that they're getting what they need? Am I staying up on the specific tax legislation? Am I staying up on, what's going on in the industry? 'Cause that's an important part of it. And again, that mindset hasn't changed. It's just that there's more of it and there's additional responsibilities that go along with it.
0:22:34.0 Erik Zhou: I love how you brought up staying up to speed on changes in tax. It's a perfect segue into actually the second segment of our little show, that I've set up for today. You're a tax partner at PwC. I would love to understand your views, or maybe the firm's views on how to think about tax for the upcoming year. And so, just context for the viewers or the listeners, we are recording this right up on the heels of the inauguration. Trump's gonna take office. There's a lot of potential changes that people are preparing for or thinking about or maybe lobbying for, in terms of tax code. Love to just get your views on it and how you would tell. What are you talking to your clients about as they prepare for the upcoming year?
0:23:19.2 Michael Williams: It's a great question. And first, I would say, continue to go back to. We have a really strong tax policy team, that focuses primarily on keeping their ears to the ground when it comes to what's coming out of the Hill. We're very deep in that section and have a lot of X...
0:23:39.0 Erik Zhou: And when you say the Hill, that's Capitol Hill?
0:23:41.0 Michael Williams: Capitol Hill. That's right.
0:23:42.2 Erik Zhou: Capitol Hill, like in DC Okay yeah. Congress. Yeah, makes sense.
0:23:45.0 Michael Williams: And so we have a great group of individuals that come from basically Capitol Hill. And so they have a lot of great insights. We actually produce a webcast called Policy on Demand. It's primarily around tax, but focuses on key policy changes. With that, I think that the other side of it is conversations with clients, continue to evolve. There's kind of two aspects that we're really focused on right now. One of them doesn't necessarily dictate changes in the White House, which goes around the operating model companies are looking at from a tax perspective and how they're handling their tax department. And then the second piece is, looking at different aspects of cash savings, timing of when you're recognizing different tax adjustments, as well as looking at expirations that are coming up if certain legislation isn't passed around the TCJA. Those are some of the things that have been kind of top of mind. Again there...
0:24:55.0 Erik Zhou: Can you explain a little bit about, let's get tactical here. What do you mean by timing of tax adjustments? A lot of accountants listen to the show. Timing is not something I choose.
0:25:06.5 Michael Williams: Yeah, absolutely.
0:25:07.6 Erik Zhou: I got a book that's accrual for this period.
0:25:10.0 Michael Williams: Yap.
0:25:10.6 Erik Zhou: But yeah, it sounds like it might be a little bit different in your world.
0:25:14.0 Michael Williams: Yeah. And I think the concept in tax that gets very interesting a lot of times is, the word tax means so many different things to a person that works in tax. And what I mean is, you could have a cash tax, you can have an effective tax rate, you can have a statutory tax rate, you can have a marginal tax rate, you can have a blended tax rate. And all of these things to controllers, to CAO's, whatever it is, mean nothing. It's all one tax number. And so, the point to that is when we think about those different tax rates, they have different implications when you're looking at your financial statements, when you're looking at your tax return. And to that example of a timing adjustment is, if a company isn't paying cash tax, having a tax liability, maybe you're in losses, but then become cash tax profitable in the next year, that timing recognition of that adjustment, becomes more impactful for that company than it would in a year in which they just have net operating losses. So what I mean by that is let's maybe dial it.
0:26:27.1 Erik Zhou: I like the way all that sounded. Yeah, walk through it.
0:26:29.1 Michael Williams: Yeah. Let's go to a simple example. Is that, if you have, if you are in losses and you have $100 expense and you take that expense and losses, it creates a bigger loss. So very simple. $100 of expense, you have a loss of $100, assuming nothing else is going on. Well, if you have income in the next year and you can move that $100, to offset that income, you then have a situation where say, I have $100 now $200 of income, that hundred dollar expense that $200 now offsets or that $100 now offsets that $200, to where now it brings down my taxable income to $100 versus the $200 from what I earned. And so the concept there is, cash is always king. Cash is always the concept of always wanting to make sure that you have liquidity. And so maybe timing that adjustment to where you can take that deduction to reduce your tax liability, now becomes beneficial to the company. And that saves a portion of the money for that year and they can properly plan for the next year.
0:27:41.7 Erik Zhou: I think one of the things you're talking about, and I'm used to this now, having being at Brex for a while, there is this concept of, you used to say it all the time. I didn't know what you meant, now I do. Book to Tax Differences. So I have a book for the US GAAP records of performance of the company, that will look different than the tax records or what I record for the P&L on my tax returns at the company. And sounds like sometimes there's a little bit of judgment or capability or ability that you have to take an expense from a current year, and maybe defer that on tax to the following year to match up better with when your tax P&L or income will arrive so that you basically have an overall cumulative lower tax liability. If that, am I kind of describing that right?
0:28:35.2 Michael Williams: Yeah, that's absolutely right. I would say, it's kind of objective opportunity is what I would call it. In the sense of, it's not as much judgment of just being able to understand the tax code and look for the opportunities to change where you're recognizing expenses, how you're looking at certain aspects of your business and moving things around. At the end of the day, there's nothing that precludes you from it as long as you're within the tax code. But I think a lot of times opportunities are missed because of the fact that, when you're in that accounting mindset, everything is recognized when it's accrued. And that can be different from a tax perspective or from a tax perspective. And that's where I would say something to kind of look out for and just kind of think about, is am I using the right tax methodologies when it comes to my financial statements?
0:29:32.5 Erik Zhou: Maybe just to dive a little bit more into the upcoming regime change and what's coming out of the Hill. Are there any things that you're seeing clients prepare for, ahead of the upcoming year? Maybe they're moving some operations around, maybe they're trying to guess that this will be a result of X, Y and Z debates in Congress, et cetera. Curious what you're seeing out in the field.
0:30:00.2 Michael Williams: What I'm seeing currently, is more outside of tax, at least for the initial few months, where the focus and a lot of publications have kind of come out around tariffs, focusing on kind of flipping the concept of the Internal Revenue Service to an outward looking revenue service to where focus is more on getting money back from foreign countries. So a lot of focus is on that foreign aspect of how that dictates and drives change in business operations within the US And so a lot of companies are not at the implementation stage of making changes, but are kind of at the wait and see of how much impact are things like tariffs and other sort of foreign tax implications going to affect my business from a US operation perspective. There are still companies that are moving forward with planning opportunities. The other side of it too is, the focus from the Trump administration has been a lot more on reducing the regulatory environment. So companies are looking at how that stimulates mergers and acquisition opportunities. Looking at, is it an opportunity for an exit strategy and how does that create value within the markets? And so the reason why that then becomes impactful to tax is all of those things then have an underlying tax collection component to it.
0:31:34.1 Michael Williams: And so, it kind of goes to my point, and we've talked about this a bunch of times Erik, is that when we think about planning opportunities, M&A. When we think about things that you don't normally think about tax, it's important to have tax be at that table when you're having those conversations to understand the downstream impact that can have on your tax books. And so a lot of the conversation is, as you're thinking about the policy changes, as you're thinking about tariffs, as you're thinking about changing business operations because of the, as a result of that, think about the tax impacts of changing those operations, to fit the need of a regulatory change that you don't necessarily have the insight on how much that would then change your taxes answer.
0:32:28.9 Erik Zhou: At Brex, we've done a couple M&A transactions and during those M&A transactions, we do financial due diligence. And then as part of financial due diligence, I think to your example, we'll aim to get, I didn't have a tax director at the time. Or tax manager, but we had an outside firm, I think it might have been PwC for one of these engagements. They came in and they had a tax person come in look at okay, for this target acquiree, what's their tax compliance been like? What are we thinking about for NOLs or. I forgot, what's the, it's such a popular concept that we always talk about when you acquire a company.
0:33:15.1 Michael Williams: 382?
0:33:15.2 Erik Zhou: Yeah. And like whether or not those NOLs at the company that you acquire can still be net operating losses that turn into deferred tax assets for you after you acquire them. And they have to, there's a threshold that they have to meet before you can consider it to be a true deferred tax asset, et cetera. And so to your point, there are these real financial consequences.
0:33:38.1 Erik Zhou: That don't necessarily appear on the regular P&L of the target as you're thinking about how to integrate them into your operations. And you don't want that surprise 'cause some of it can be material at the end of the day. And so I totally get what you're saying. One more question just on how to think about managing a corporate tax function. You have both public and private clients, I'm assuming. Public company meaning listed on the NASDAQ or NYSE. Do you approach tax differently for both? Do those teams approach tax differently between a public and private company? Curious if that's something you could share.
0:34:19.2 Michael Williams: I would take it a step further and say, every company is unique and so it doesn't always dictate if it's private or public, but it's what's the need. And that's where it goes back to what's the need, where's the value? And that's where when we think about the operations of a company and fit for purpose around their tax function, there's a lot of different aspects to how that works. And what I mean is, you could have a situation where you could have a private company that has a heavy need for a full suite of tax services because of the fact that they have additional tax filing obligations in multiple states, they have sales tax, they have foreign taxes where they need a big brethren of individuals in house to be able to deliver. There's public companies that...
0:35:14.5 Erik Zhou: And you're saying like that exists no matter what. If you're a public company or you're a private company?
0:35:19.9 Michael Williams: Exactly, exactly.
0:35:21.2 Erik Zhou: The breadth of your operations hits all these different jurisdictions that they want revenue for you operating there. So they'll tax you. Then you got what you needed, you deserve that. Yeah, makes sense.
0:35:33.7 Michael Williams: And the second part is that, it's the alternative for a public company where, if your operations don't fit the need for a full-time tax person, you can look at different leveraging models and how that opportunity works. And again, even if you are in a situation where you have a lot of complex needs, you also have to evaluate that against availability of resources. And that is a continual steam across the market, internal, external, what have you, is do you have individuals that can serve a purpose in your international, in your state, local, in your foreign, in all these different aspects? Or does it make sense to leverage resources outside of your company that can create that additional value at a lower cost?
0:36:29.2 Erik Zhou: I know what you're saying. I think at the end of the day, if you're a public company, sure you're a public company and there's SOX controls that you may have to do over your tax provision. But if at the end of the day, you have a actually simpler operating model for your company, and a smaller breadth of operations across different jurisdictions, you might be a public company, but your tax footprint might be simpler actually than that of a private company that is operating all over the place, at the end of the day. So, I think what you're saying is public or private, there's the SOX component, but ultimately it boils down to your actual physical footprint and operations and things like that to determine the level of effort that you need to put in there. And then I think, sorry, the second thing that I took away from you was, you're a public company, maybe you do outsource your tax provision basically. Maybe because if you only have a US Federal provision and then maybe a few states that you operate in, is that really a full-time tax person's job, that you have to have? And so, yeah I see what you're saying. But, let me know if I interpreted what you said.
0:37:39.6 Michael Williams: No, I think like I said, it's a fluid process and again, every year's not gonna look the same. But I think it's just the demands around, where do you find the most value? And it's helpful as you've experienced on both sides, where it's helpful sometimes to have someone internal, it's helpful to have someone external. And so just knowing that balance and always continuing to reevaluate that, is an important aspect of it. And so when you think about what does my tax department look like or what are my internal functions look like, I think there's no real one-size-fits-all. It's really looking at how are you operating, what are you currently doing, what are your needs and how you can best maximize that value, internal or external.
0:38:33.4 Erik Zhou: We are running up on the end of the show and so, I always end the show with something fun, which is what we call finance leaders are fun too. You're a finance leader, you're in tax. You're a partner at PwC. So do you have any jokes or tax jokes or tax debacles or stories that you can share with the audience?
0:38:54.0 Michael Williams: Yeah, I don't know if I have a tax joke, but kind of going back to one of the things that more recently came up and I was just thinking about this, again the other day is, one of the things because of COVID and remote work and what have you, is a lot of my clients are now spread out across the country. And so I spend a little bit more time traveling than I historically have done where everyone was kind of located within a few blocks of downtown San Francisco. And so, I was thinking about this a few days ago, I was on a zone Red Eye to Boston. And if you've ever been on a Red Eye, it's half the plane sleeping, and it's pretty quiet and the lights are out. And I started noticing one of the flight attendants was scurrying past me pretty fast, back and forth. And kind of startled me and started realizing that, is this it? And I'm very concerned that this might be my last trip here. And the next time she walks by, I stopped her and I said, "Excuse me, is everything okay?
0:40:08.1 Michael Williams: And she goes, "Well, someone lost a cap." And I was thinking to myself, a cap, is in a bottle cap. And so, I was just thinking to myself how crazy it is that someone would panic that much over a bottle cap. And so she scurries by and comes back again. And I go, they lost a bottle cap? And she goes, "No, someone lost their cat." As in a feline. And I think it takes a new term to someone let the cat out of the bag. But what they did is ultimately this cat was in the back of the plane, and made itself all the way up to first class and had buried itself in someone's seat. And it's always one of my most memorable stories of traveling, because I had never experienced someone actually literally letting the cat out of the bag in the middle of a flight.
[laughter]
0:41:09.6 Michael Williams: But the cat made it safe and everybody landed okay. But...
0:41:13.3 Erik Zhou: I've actually never seen a cat on a plane. Even dogs.
0:41:16.0 Michael Williams: Yeah, that's exactly it. And I was thinking about that too, as if someone had a dog that didn't like cats. This could have turned into a good cartoon episode, but it was pretty crazy.
0:41:27.7 Erik Zhou: Well, that's all the time we have today. Michael, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm sure we'll catch up at some point in real life. Appreciate you.
0:41:34.2 Michael Williams: Yeah, thank you so much. Appreciate the time.
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