Location:
Houston, TX (HO) - Finance - Hub
How will you CONTRIBUTE and GROW?Are you an experienced, forward-thinking property tax leader looking to drive innovation and transformation? Airgas is seeking a highly motivated Property Tax Manager to join our team in Houston, TX. In this key role, you will serve as a strategic partner, providing sound professional advice to management on all tax and tax law matters and their practical application to our business. You will direct end-to-end multi-jurisdictional compliance, lead audit defenses, mentor a talented team, and leverage cutting-edge AI and automation tools to modernize our tax processes.
What You Will Do (Key Responsibilities)
- Proactive Initiative & Drive: Bring a strong ownership mindset to manage tight deadlines, multi-task under pressure, and independently drive continuous process improvements with minimal oversight.
- Tax Compliance: Direct the end-to-end compliance cycle for multi-jurisdictional real and personal property tax assets. Ensure absolute precision in material filings, payment processing, and system management within PTMS and enterprise ERPs (Oracle/SAP).
- Industrial Valuation & Audit Defense: Leverage deep technical knowledge of manufacturing, chemical, and industrial plant valuations to evaluate assessments, lead property tax audits, and negotiate directly with taxing authorities to secure favorable appeal outcomes.
- Accounting Rigor & Financial Control: Oversee property tax accruals, balance sheet reconciliations, budgeting, and financial forecasting. Identify cost-saving opportunities and actively pursue economic development incentives to optimize financial performance.
- Team Leadership & Quality Control: Mentor, train, and review the technical work product of property tax staff and offshore Shared Services partners. Establish accountable performance standards, enforce data integrity, and streamline operational workflows.
- Jurisdictional Relationship Management: Build and sustain authoritative, high-integrity relationships with state and local taxing jurisdictions, assessment officials, and third-party consultants.
- Regional & Group Alignment: Ensure the effective operation of the Tax function within the region, aligning with Group and Regional Tax specialists on key matters.
- Strategic Advisory: Provide and manage commercial and technical tax advice to stakeholders, ensuring consistent and effective tax risk management. Support investment papers with tax expertise as needed.
- Cross-Regional Collaboration: Collaborate with the Group tax team on cross-regional tax issues. Maintain relationships with internal and external stakeholders across functions and the organization.
- Compliance & Audits: Oversee tax accounting, compliance, and audits to ensure regulatory adherence. Review and support transfer pricing documentation.
- Tax Transformation & Digitalization: Lead tax transformation initiatives, including the transfer of transactional tax activities to Finance GBS and optimizing tax-related processes, including digitalization.
- Risk & Insurance Management: Ensure adequate industrial risk coverage through appropriate insurance programs for regional affiliates, aligning with Group and Regional Insurance.
__________________Are you a MATCH?Required Qualifications- Education: Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related discipline.
- Tax Management Experience: 3+ years of tax management experience, including prior experience managing direct reports or technical team members.
- Deep Industry Experience: 10+ years of direct, hands-on property tax experience managing large-scale, complex multi-state corporate portfolios.
- Tax Regulations & Statutory Research: In-depth knowledge of state and local tax statutes across multi-jurisdictional landscapes, with a demonstrated ability to conduct legal and tax research to interpret changing regulations.
- Valuation Expertise: Strong, proven background in personal and real property valuation methodologies applied to complex industrial, manufacturing, chemical, or process plant assets.
- Negotiation & Dispute Resolution: Superior negotiation skills with a track record of successfully advocating before assessment boards, tax commissioners, and local authorities to achieve tax settlements.
- Work Schedule (Hybrid): This is a hybrid position, requiring 3 days per week in our Houston, TX office.
- Travel: Willingness to travel up to 20% on average as required.
- Work Authorization: Must have valid U.S. work authorization without requiring current or future visa sponsorship.
Preferred Qualifications- Advanced Degree: Master's degree in Accounting, Tax, or Business Administration.
- AI Adoption & Process Modernization: Demonstrated experience leveraging AI tools, intelligent automation, and modern tech workflows to optimize tax analytics, automate data processing, and continuously drive operational efficiencies across the property tax calendar cycle.
- Advanced Data Management & Enterprise Systems: Advanced capabilities handling, analyzing, and auditing large volumes of fixed asset data; expert-level skill in leveraging PTMS, advanced spreadsheets, and enterprise ERP data structures (SAP/Oracle) to drive reporting efficiency.
