The Stoic Tax Professional: Part 2

This is an update to an article I wrote in 2020 about how stoic principles and exercises apply to a person working specifically in tax. You can find it on the website.

The modern Canadian tax professional operates in a world defined by uncertainty, pressure, and asymmetry. Audits unfold over years. Clients expect certainty where none exists. The CRA exercises broad powers. Outcomes often turn on facts that are incomplete, evolving, or imperfectly understood. Against that backdrop, technical skill alone is not enough. What distinguishes a consistently effective practitioner is judgment, composure, and discipline under pressure.

Stoic philosophy, particularly as expressed in Epictetus’ Enchiridion and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, offers a practical framework for precisely those demands. It is not just abstract philosophy, rather, it is a set of mental exercises and habits that map directly onto the daily realities of tax practice (“see my software analogy in the previous article”).

Control and the Structure of a Tax Dispute

The foundational Stoic principle is the distinction between what is within one’s control and what is not. For a tax professional, this line of reasoning is incredibly important.

Within control are the quality of analysis, the framing of arguments, the completeness of the evidentiary record, and the professionalism of communications with the CRA, opposing counsel, and the Court. Outside control are the auditor’s approach, the Appeals Officer’s disposition, the credibility of third-party witnesses, and ultimately, the Court’s decision. Also, you can’t control how opposing counsel will act. You can be incredibly reasonable about things but you will always find those who are not receptive to reasonability.

Many professional frustrations arise from confusing these categories. The auditor who adopts a flawed methodology, the reassessment that contains obvious errors, or the decision that does not engage with a key argument are all outside the practitioner’s control. The Stoic approach is not passive acceptance of poor reasoning, but disciplined focus on what can be influenced: building a record that exposes those flaws, advancing arguments with clarity, and preserving issues for review.

This distinction does in fact have practical consequences. It ultimately reduces wasted emotional energy, sharpens advocacy, and improves consistency in performance across files.

The Discipline of Assent in Audit and Litigation

Epictetus emphasizes the need to examine impressions before accepting them as true. In tax practice, this is directly applicable to both sides of the dispute.

Auditors often proceed on assumptions, extrapolations, and partial records. The Stoic tax professional resists the impulse to react immediately or emotionally. Instead, each assertion is tested. What is the evidentiary basis? What assumption is being made? Is the inference justified?

The same discipline applies internally. A client’s narrative, however compelling, is not accepted uncritically. Nor is one’s initial legal theory. The practitioner who pauses before assenting to an impression avoids strategic errors that can shape the entire course of a file.

In practical terms, this discipline manifests as careful review of audit proposals, precise identification of assumptions in pleadings, and a refusal to concede ground without evidentiary support.

Voluntary Discomfort and Professional Resilience

Stoic exercises include voluntary exposure to discomfort as a means of building resilience. For a tax professional, the equivalent lies in deliberately engaging with the most difficult aspects of a file early.

This includes confronting weak facts, adverse documents, and problematic legal authorities rather than avoiding them. It includes stress-testing arguments before they are tested by the CRA or the Court. It includes preparing for hostile cross-examination rather than assuming it can be managed in the moment.

The practitioner who adopts this mindset is less likely to be destabilized when those issues arise in real time. What appears as composure under pressure is often the result of prior deliberate exposure to that pressure in controlled conditions.

Negative Visualization and Risk Management

The Stoic practice of imagining adverse outcomes is not just pessimism, it is preparation.

In the tax context, this means asking, at the outset of a file, what the worst plausible outcome looks like. What if the Court accepts the Minister’s assumptions in full? What if key evidence is excluded? What if a limitation period argument fails?

By working through these scenarios, the practitioner identifies vulnerabilities and addresses them proactively. It informs decisions about settlement, evidentiary strategy, and client communication. It also reduces the shock of adverse developments, because they have already been contemplated and planned for. And it is verily important to consider this in the context of advising a client.

Amor Fati and the Use of Adversity

Marcus Aurelius’ formulation that the obstacle becomes the way has particular resonance in tax disputes.

Flawed audit methodologies, overbroad requirements for information, and internally inconsistent reassessments are not merely obstacles. Properly handled, they become the foundation of the taxpayer’s case.

A reassessment built on incorrect assumptions can be dismantled. An audit that overreaches may give rise to procedural arguments or credibility issues. Delays can strengthen fairness narratives in appropriate cases.

The Stoic tax professional does not simply endure these difficulties. They are used, systematically, to advance the client’s position.

Indifference to Outcome, Commitment to Process

Stoicism does not suggest that outcomes are irrelevant in a practical sense. Clients care deeply about results, and so should their advisors. The Stoic point is more precise: the outcome does not define the quality of the professional’s conduct. The Bhagavad Gita is also famous for advising that we should focus on efforts and not the fruits of those efforts.

A well-prepared case can be lost. A poorly reasoned reassessment can be upheld. External factors, including judicial preferences and evidentiary gaps, play a role that cannot be eliminated.

By focusing on process rather than outcome, the practitioner maintains consistency across files. The same level of preparation, analysis, and advocacy is applied regardless of perceived chances of success. Over time, this approach produces better results, but more importantly, it produces reliability, which is the foundation of professional reputation.

Temperance in Client Management

Tax practice involves managing client expectations, often in difficult circumstances. Clients may be frustrated, anxious, or convinced of positions that are not legally sustainable.

The Stoic virtues of temperance and justice guide these interactions. Temperance restrains the impulse to overpromise or to adopt aggressive positions that cannot be supported. Justice requires candour with the client, even where the message is unwelcome.

This includes clearly explaining risks, correcting misunderstandings, and resisting pressure to pursue arguments that lack merit. In the long run, this approach builds trust and protects both the client and the practitioner.

Memento Mori and Professional Perspective

The Stoic reminder of mortality serves a practical function. It places daily frustrations in context.

The delayed response from the CRA, the contentious discovery, or the adverse interlocutory ruling are part of the profession, but they are not the whole of it. Maintaining perspective reduces the tendency to react disproportionately to routine difficulties.

It also sharpens focus on what matters in the long term: competence, integrity, and the development of a body of work that reflects both. It reminds me of my mentor’s (perhaps morbid) advice to keep in my mind that we all end up in the same place.

Conclusion

The Stoic tax professional is not detached or indifferent in the colloquial sense. The approach is disciplined rather than emotional, focused rather than reactive, and grounded in process rather than outcome.

By applying Stoic exercises such as the control dichotomy, disciplined assent, negative visualization, and voluntary engagement with difficulty, the Canadian tax professional can improve not only performance, but also durability in the practice.

The result is a practitioner who is difficult to unsettle, consistent in approach, and effective over the long arc of a career.

By Amit Ummat

Ummat Tax Law PC
Barristers & Solicitors
5500 North Service Road, Suite 1005
Burlington, ON L7L 6W6
(905) 336-8924 – Call Anytime.