Tax Director, Investment Tax

Tax Director, Investment Tax

Department: Finance

Type: Permanent

Location: Toronto, ON

Posting Date: June 12, 2025

At OPTrust, paying pensions today, preserving pensions for tomorrow is our mission and business.

When you choose OPTrust, you join a team of smart, talented people who fuel our success and have a passion for pensions. Everyone at OPTrust – from Toronto, London, and Sydney – makes a meaningful impact. Our environment is fast paced but we find time to have fun and give back to the community as well. Our strength resides in our team members with different backgrounds and perspectives creating an inclusive and fulfilling place to work for everyone.

What OPTrust Offers You

• Unique culture rooted in our core values – collaboration and teamwork, integrity, respect, flexibility, and excellence and continuous improvement – reflected across the team.

• Dedicated business strategy for inclusion, diversity, and equity with multiple, meaningful opportunities to participate.

• Flexible, hybrid work model being implemented to balance the benefits of working from home and the collaborative teamwork experience in the office.

• Membership in our world-class defined benefit pension plan.

• A purpose-driven environment, including the opportunity to contribute to OPTrust’s climate change and responsible investing programs.

• Professional development opportunities and learning initiatives including access to LinkedIn Learning, in-house speaker series, tuition reimbursement program and professional association memberships.

• Comprehensive benefits package focused on your health and wellness, including dental, vision and extended health benefits.

• Opportunity to take parental and adoptions leaves to spend time with family.

• Competitive vacation package and time away from work such as work-life balance days.

If you strive for excellence and continuous improvement, value a collaborative and flexible team culture, and approach everything with integrity and respect, then we invite you to apply to join our team!

About the Role

The successful candidate for this role will be an exceptional tax transactional lawyer or accountant working as part of the Toronto-based Tax team.  While OPTrust, as a defined benefit pension plan, is largely exempt from income tax in Canada, it both invests globally and has asset management operations in the U.K. and Australia. The Tax team provides value through deal support and tax planning across geographies within a dynamic environment.

Reporting to the Vice President, Tax, this role will work closely with the investment teams and will support and advise on a wide range of domestic and international transactions. The individual will also be involved with enterprise tax planning and governance matters and will be expected to lead cross-functional projects. A motivated self-starter with a partnering focused mindset, the individual will be exposed to a broad range of investment transactions across a continuously evolving strategic landscape, including private equity, infrastructure, real estate, private funds and capital markets.  In collaboration with the Investment Division, Legal Services and external tax advisors, this role provides and evaluates domestic and international tax advice on a deal-by-deal basis. The individual will directly advise deal teams in Toronto, London and Sydney, providing solution-based and risk-adjusted advice in support of our global investment mandate.  In particular, the individual will lead the relationship management between the Tax Department and the Investment Division with respect to at least one asset class and will also be deeply involved in other asset classes. 

The individual will support the asset management mandate of the Plan and will monitor investments through their lifecycle – this is critical as global tax regulations are continuously changing. 

The role requires transactional tax expertise and a deep technical understanding of Canadian corporate tax rules. Pension experience is an asset. In addition, the role requires familiarity with international tax rules in jurisdictions such as the U.S., U.K. and Australia.

What You’ll Do

Support Investment Deals

• Support and advise the investment teams with sound counsel across a variety of transactional matters related to investments globally. Work with and manage external tax counsel in a variety of jurisdictions.

• Participate as an active partner with business units across the organization, using the opportunity to guide and support decision making and mitigate tax risk. 

• Support the asset management mandate of the Plan and will monitor investments through their lifecycle, as global tax regulations are continuously changing. 

• Work directly with legal counsel, Investment Finance, and others to provide pro-active and creative business, asset management and investment solutions

Tax Planning and Governance

• Provide enterprise-wide tax advice across the jurisdictions in which OPTrust operates and invests. 

• Plan, supervise and execute complex tax initiatives.  Examples of projects include: tax planning to implement opportunities to save operating expenses or increase returns, or in response to evolving global tax regulations.

• Advise on committee matters and support the development of internal guidelines and tax risk management policies.

• Monitor changes in tax legislation and the regulatory environment in relevant jurisdictions and communicate significant findings to relevant stakeholders across the organization. Work with the investment teams to analyze the impact on investment returns.

What You Bring

• LLB/JD or CPA.

• 8+ years of experience in tax advisory, with a focus on tax support for private equity and/or mergers & acquisitions, pension investments, cross border transactions and/or investment funds at a top-tier law firm, a “big 4” accounting firm, or in-house tax department.

• Excellent Canadian corporate tax planning, and a willingness to learn relevant tax rules in jurisdictions in which OPTrust operates and/or investments such as the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

• Strong knowledge of pension funds and/or investment products is an asset.

• Effective communication and interpersonal skills as the role directly interacts with deal teams, senior management, external advisors, and regulators.

• Enjoys working collaboratively with many different stakeholders.

• Client-oriented approach including a demonstrated ability to build trust with clients.

• Strong tax and business judgment, and a demonstrated ability to develop recommendations on transactions as well as policies and controls for tax related processes.

• Willingness to engage in different types of advisory opportunities and adapt to and learn a broad set of transaction types.

• Exceptional organizational and analytical skills with the ability to project manage critical work to completion.

• Ability to manage a number of files at the same time while maintaining high standards of client service.

Please submit your application via Workday by June 26, 2025.

Serving a membership as diverse as ours and investing in a global market means cultivating an environment that embraces inclusion, diversity, and equity in everything we do. OPTrust is an organization engaged in building on our unique and diverse strengths. We know a diversity of backgrounds, cultures, gender identities and perspectives are critical to achieving our shared goals.

If you require accommodation at any time during the recruitment process, please send a message to [email protected], or discuss your needs with the Talent Acquisition Consultant during the telephone screening. We will do our best to work with you and provide appropriate accommodation.

As an organization we’re seeking ways to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Call to Action 92. We are working with the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business to build bridges with Indigenous communities and partners, and we have created an employee-led Reconciliation Working Group that will work with Indigenous experts to identify a path to reconciliation for our organization.

We thank all interested applicants, however only those under consideration will be contacted.