About the role The US Tax Operations team ensures that Rippling’s customers remain compliant with federal, state, and local tax regulations. As the Tax Operations Manager for PEO Notice Resolution, you will lead the specialized team responsible for protecting Rippling’s PEO entity and its clients from tax liabilities.
In the PEO model, Rippling acts as the Employer of Record for tax purposes. This means tax notices often arrive in Rippling’s name, covering hundreds or thousands of clients under a single Master Account. You will manage the high-stakes operations of resolving these Master Account notices, managing aggregate filing discrepancies, and ensuring the health of our PEO tax infrastructure. You will lead a team of specialists to mitigate financial risk, abate penalties, and drive systemic improvements in how PEO taxes are processed.
Key Areas of Focus:
1. PEO Operational Management
- Master Account Stewardship: Oversee the resolution of notices related to Rippling’s Master Federal and State accounts. Ensure that notices affecting the "Parent" entity are resolved immediately to prevent levies or standing issues.
- Aggregate Liability Management: Manage the complex workflows associated with Schedule R (Form 941) discrepancies and state-level aggregate reconciliations.
- Risk Mitigation: Prioritize work based on financial exposure. PEO notices often carry significantly higher penalty amounts than Direct client notices; your team is the first line of defense.
2. People Leadership & Development
- Team Leadership: Manage a team of Operations Specialists and potential Team Leads. Build a culture of precision, as PEO errors have exponential downstream effects.
- Technical Upskilling: Train the team on the nuances of PEO taxation, including SUTA dumping regulations, successor/predecessor relationships, and co-employment tax law.
- Performance Accountability: rigorous management of team KPIs, ensuring the team keeps up with the high volume of mail and agency correspondence inherent to PEOs.
3. Strategic Process Improvement
- Mailroom & Indexing Strategy: Since PEO notices often come physically to Rippling HQs, you will oversee the strategy for efficient intake, digitization, and indexing of thousands of documents.
- Root Cause Analysis: Partner with PEO Engineering and Tax Product teams to identify why notices are occurring on the Master Accounts and drive product fixes to prevent them.
4. Stakeholder Collaboration
- Agency Relations: Act as the primary liaison for critical negotiations with tax agencies regarding Master Account standings.
- Cross-Functional Partnership: Work closely with the PEO Operations and Implementation teams to ensure that new client onboards and offboards are not generating downstream tax noise.
Key Responsibilities:
- Manage the daily operations of the PEO Notice Resolution team, ensuring SLAs are met for both Master Account and Client-Level PEO notices.
- Monitor queue health and drive the reduction of "Unindexed" or "Unassigned" mail items.
- Lead investigations into large-scale SUI rate discrepancies on Master Accounts.
- Analyze penalty data to identify trends and implement abatement strategies to save the company money.
- Serve as the escalation point for complex PEO tax controversies.
- Develop and maintain SOPs specific to PEO tax resolution (e.g., handling mass-agency notices).
Performance Metrics:
- Financial Impact: Dollar value of penalties abated and interest saved.
- Queue Health: Maintenance of the PEO notice backlog within target SLAs.
- Master Account Compliance: Zero "Good Standing" failures on critical PEO entities due to unresolved notices.
- Resolution Quality: QA scores above 95% for team case work.
Roadmap (First 6-12 Months)
Initial 30 Days:
- Audit Risk: Review the current status of all Master Accounts and identify any immediate levies or critical notices.
- Team Assessment: Evaluate the technical proficiency of the current team regarding PEO-specific workflows.
- Workflow Mapping: Map out the lifecycle of a PEO notice from Mailroom to Resolution.
First 90 Days:
- Process Stabilization: Implement stricter controls on notice indexing to ensure no mail is lost or delayed.
- Metric Alignment: Establish clear KPIs for "Master Account" vs. "Client Level" notice resolution speeds.
- SOP Refresh: Update documentation to reflect the latest agency requirements for PEO reporting.
First 6 Months:
- Automation Projects: Partner with Product to automate the matching of physical mail to digital client records.
- Proactive Audits: Launch a quarterly initiative to audit state SUI rates before notices are triggered.