Stephen Dunphy.

PositionRoss Stores Inc. vice president of tax operations - Interview

It's almost axiomatic that a great teacher can make a major difference in your career, whether your field is athletics, entertainment, technology, or, yes, even tax.

That certainly has been true for Stephen Dunphy, vice president, tax operations, at Ross Stores Inc. in the Silicon Valley. Dunphy earned his undergraduate degree in business administration, with a concentration in accounting, from California State University, East Bay (CSUEB). "CSUEB is known for its accounting program and required students to enroll in an individual income tax course. My professor, Kathleen 'Kitty' Wright, taught the individual income tax course in which she engaged her students through her real-world examples gained from her experiences at KPMG and Citibank," Dunphy says. "Professor Wright was gifted with an ability to tell a story and would introduce the tax law and then relate it to her previous experience with the Citibank executive team or discussions with her financial auditors and tax examiners." For Dunphy, Wright was pivotal in his career because, simply put, she made tax exciting, which is sometimes a difficult task.

A Passion for Accounting

Dunphy finds tax accounting intriguing, calling it a "passion." He enjoys the debits, credits, and T-accounts just as much as taxation itself. "There is a lot of uncertainty in taxes, which makes the tax accounting interesting," Dunphy notes.

That passion for accounting isn't dimmed even when Dunphy runs into problematic tax problems in his work. As TEI members can relate to, when a new tax law is enacted, it must be analyzed and its direct and indirect tax effects accounted for. According to Dunphy, while the direct tax impacts are usually straightforward, understanding and tracing all the indirect tax effects can be quite difficult. "The danger of not recognizing all the indirect tax effects from a change in tax law could lead to a misstatement of taxes in the financials. Given the risk of having a misstatement and quite possibly an internal control failure is why this is the most problematic area of tax and leads to sleepless nights," he explains.

The Ross Rewards

Working for Ross has proven particularly rewarding, Dunphy says. A TEI connection was instrumental in Dunphy s finding his way to the California-based company, he explains: "Eric Johnson is the president of the Silicon Valley Chapter and incoming regional vice president at TEI. I met Eric through TEI when he was at Intel and I was at Cisco Systems...

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