Government Tax Profession

Government Tax Profession Overview

With around 15,000 tax professionals working across government, the Government Tax Profession is one of the largest and most influential professional communities in the Civil Service.

You are part of the Government Tax Profession if your role involves applying tax knowledge or developing it through learning and experience. This can include working in one or more areas of tax, such as customs, VAT, or compliance, and across different business areas including policy, litigation, and operations.

Career Opportunities and Programmes

The profession offers a varied and stimulating range of career pathways in roles spanning a range of government departments across the UK. The largest presence of tax professionals sits in HM Revenue & Customs where there are opportunities to specialise in, for example, compliance, specialist tax help and advice, fraud, tax policy or as a manager.

Tax Specialist Programme is HMRC’s tax professional flagship recruitment programme. The link provides more detail on what the programme involves and how to apply.

The Tax Centre of Excellence (CoE) is a central resource for departmental tax advice and services available to Government departments, comprising of teams from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Home Office (HO), and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), supported by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). You can read more about Tax CoE via the One Finance site.

Learning and Development

You can explore more about approved learning for the tax profession via the specialist skills guide. We are currently reviewing and updating this page. Further information will be made available in due course. If you have specific questions or need tailored advice, please contact the Tax Professionalism Team.

The HMRC Charter:

For more information, click here

The current Learning Frameworks contract is ending on 30 April 2026. This change will impact when you can book learning linked to our Professions pages. To support you with this transition, any courses impacted by the change will display a notice.

The final date for bookings is 30 April 2026, with learning required to start by 31 July 2026 and finish by 31 January 2027. After this deadline, new bookings will resume after the new contract starts.

These changes are happening across a series of waves and more information can be found here. The products in Wave 1 will not be available to book from 30 June 2025, and products in Wave 2 will not be available to book from 1 November 2025. The products in Wave 3 will need to start by 30 April 2026 and therefore we recommend bookings are made six weeks before this, by 19 March 2026.