Tax has developed a reputation over the years for being a serious and rather joyless profession, partly due to decades of tax professionals being portrayed as men in suits with piles of paperwork in the mainstream movies and TV shows of the late nineties and early noughties, writes Niall Kiernan, senior director of product management for ecommerce and marketplaces at Vertex. Today, however, the adoption of new, emerging technologies, paired with significant changes to traditional workplaces and cultures, has given rise to a new ‘face’ for the industry. Tax is heading in a new direction, and it is being led there by ‘the tax technologist’.