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FARB-FinAudRegB
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2009 at 22:02 | IP Logged
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I like tax and want to do taxes for the rest of my life. I'm seriously considering a Masters in Taxation (MST) or a Juris Doctor (JD).
Which is best?
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Dahlia1
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2009 at 00:14 | IP Logged
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Me too!!! Love taxes! I think about MS Tax because I can do it online while I am at work during slow time. For JD I would have to go back to Law School. So, JD is out of question. You also have to pass Bar exam and maintain your license. I do not know much about JD except that is higher than MS Tax.
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Kfan
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The legal job market is in shambles right now. You might want to see if it recovers in a few years before investing big bucks in law school. Even though things are bad in accounting right now, they're not nearly as bad as in law, and at least I didn't have to spend much to become a CPA candidate.
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mrkennedy
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2009 at 03:17 | IP Logged
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I was in your shoes 4 years ago. I went the JD/LLM route. This was because
I wasn't sure I wanted to do tax. It gave me more career options, but those
options came at the price of 3 additional years of tuition. If you are set on
tax as a career and don't have a strong desire to do tax law in a law firm, go
with the MST. The JD/LLM can pay off depending on the market, though. If I
graduated in 2006, I would have the option of making 2X the salary of a Big
4 position at a law firm. However, if you think Big 4 hours are rough, then a
law firm's hours would be pure hell.
So just think about what how set on your career you are. If you ultimately
want a Big 4 gig, I think the MST will suffice. You will put yourself in less
student loan and get to a similar place.
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Barry223
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I agree with what's been said here already. A law degree is just not worth
$150k (or whatever ungodly amount they are charging these days) and
three years of lost wages (and your life). If you plan on staying with
accounting firms, I don't think it makes you all that much more
marketable and certainly not enough to justify the time and effort and
money involved. I also don't think it's worth it to give up on a perfectly
decent career like accounting by gambling on the (ever diminishing)
chance of getting a job with a large law firm.
I think the MST is a much better bet. You will actually obtain practical
knowledge and get to know other people in the field. All of the professors
in the program I attended were adjuncts who worked in local firms and
were by and large very down-to-earth people who taught what you
needed to know in a way that related to work you will actually do. Also,
the MST is much cheaper.
I have both degrees (but a totally useless undergrad), and if I could turn
back the clock I would have done a bachelor's degree in accounting and
probably gone for the MST later. I would have skipped out on law school
altogether.
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Topic: Differences between MST and JD
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