Taxation is difficult and highly technical. Even most lawyers are quite scared of tax laws, in law school as well as afterwards. However, tax law is very rewarding, and perhaps one area where competition is not as tough. Corporate taxation is especially highly rewarding.
India has complex tax laws. Despite significant simplification of indirect tax laws through the introduction of GST, laws remain complicated and are changed fairly frequently. It is also a service that almost every business requires.
Of course, tax lawyer’s mainstays are income tax and other tax disputes. However, significant opportunities also arise in every transaction as tax lawyers provide very critical inputs with respect to tax efficiency of every transaction. Whether a company should be bought by acquisition of shares or slump sale, whether to acquire the subsidiary or the holding company in another country, how to reduce tax liabilities in each transaction - these things are decided by tax lawyers.
Some of India’s most famous lawyers such as Nani Palkhivala, Harish Salve, Arvind Datar etc. started as tax lawyers, and eventually became the most illustrious constitutional lawyers.
This is partly because tax law matters involve high stakes, and government keeps coming up with new tax laws and changes existing laws, opening an opportunity for challenging these laws in the court.
The opportunity to build big law firms is also very high for tax lawyers. Several leading full service law firms today were originally started by tax lawyers. Good examples will be Nishith Desai Associates, Lakshmikumaran and Sridharan, Economic Law Practice, Vaish Associates etc. In these cases, highly profitable tax practices eventually led to creation of larger full service corporate law practices.
In short, tax law offers opportunities like few other areas of law. It is evergreen, always in high demand and good tax lawyers are always short in supply.
Companies which earn thousands of crores have to pay taxes in hundreds of crores. They will go to great lengths to legally reduce their tax burden, which straight on adds to their profits. Naturally, it is lucrative to be an effective tax lawyer.