Anthony Sciarra, a tax leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York, is joining Armanino's tax practice Monday as the San Ramon, California-based firm continues to grow.
Sciarra will be partner-in-charge of tax, Armanino's biggest service area, overseeing strategy, growth and operations across a national team of tax professionals serving middle-market, high-growth and enterprise clients.
At PwC, Sciarra held senior tax leadership roles focused on growth strategy and tax transformation, including advising a number of top financial services institutions. Before joining PwC, he had senior leadership positions at AIG and Enstar Group, where he managed complex tax functions across large multinational organizations.
"It's not just macro tax changes at the federal level that's really impacting our client base and their companies," Sciarra told Accounting Today. "If you look at New York City, where I live, the nonresident real estate tax was passed, and our client base is going to be impacted by that in a number of different ways. Not only are they making decisions on where to locate their business, but what their personal investment base is. More and more you're seeing non-income-based tax regimes, which require extensive modeling capabilities, and that's something that we think we can provide a differentiated service, and will continue to be necessary, no matter what happens with the tax laws."
Armanino is making other leadership moves within the tax practice: Caleb Crandell is expanding his leadership role to oversee core middle-market tax services, including the privately held business, real estate, not-for-profit and private equity practice groups. David Miller, Jon Davies, and John Karls are continuing in their tax leadership roles.
"We look at Armanino today as a Top 20 Firm with a very significant middle-market practice that we have," Armanino Advisory CEO Matt Armanino told Accounting Today. "We like the global middle market space that we are in. Many of our best leaders over the years have actually joined us with Big Four experience. We find that some of the strongest leaders are those who have joined us with the background, the technical chops, the vision for what it looks like to scale and continue to work with larger clients, but they have an entrepreneurial bent that really aligns very well with our unique culture. We strive to be the most innovative and entrepreneurial firm that really empowers our partners to grow and be impactful for the benefit of our clients and make a positive impact on their lives and the lives of our people. We love the fact that Anthony has seen a little bit of our future, and we're going to have a really great set of experiences to rely on there."
He is focusing on strengthening the firm's tax practice. "Our tax practice is our largest practice,: said Armanino. "Armanino has been around for 57 years now, so tax has always been a core foundation for our firm. We love the tax business. It provides opportunity for significant value add and deep relationships with our clients in an area of increased complexity."
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"Our vision there is to be the leading provider of technology-enabled professional services to middle-market companies and high net worth individuals," said Armanino. "We clearly see a convergence today between traditional professional services and what it's been historically, and the impact today of amazing transformational enabling technologies like AI, which we see as an opportunity to enhance the value of our people in our organization, and the set of solutions and capabilities that we bring to our clients."
"One of the things that really attracted me to Armanino — and it's part of the reason why the client base and the reputation is what it is — this is not just about becoming a tech-enabled firm to be able to deliver at a cheaper cost point," said Sciarra. "This is about embracing the best of technology, as Armanino has always done, to build a firm that has the best capabilities to provide for what the clients need, as well as to provide for opportunity for people that work at our firm."
He talked to the leaders at Armanino about how AI and other technology can generate additional capabilities for clients. "That's what I'm super excited about digging into is building off the foundation that Matt and the leadership team and the tax leadership team have built to really drive a new set of capabilities into our industry," said Sciarra.
Armanino's tax practice ranges across 30 office locations and over 800 professionals with credentials including CPA, AEP, EA, CTP, ATA and CITA.
