I work at a WNTO in M&A tax, which means I work pretty much entirely with lawyers who have GULC tax LLMs, all of whom tell me that getting a JD (and then an entire LLM, in their cases) just to do tax was a dumb one they regret, although lawyers always say they regret becoming lawyers.

I got to a very law heavy tax practice (PLRs, technical memos, treaties and case analysis, structuring, policy review, white papers, etc.) with just a CPA. If you are interested in those pieces of it- don't spend the money to get an entire JD; you can get there far faster by working. You can make just as much money without the debt. You can do the fun, and really neat parts of tax, the consulting bits, the cross-border bits, the strategy bits, without spending so much money.

If you are interested in like more of the IRS litigation parts of it, that's a different convo, and one where a law degree makes sense. So if you want to do the actual "arguments in court" bit- the JD is worth it. If you want to do the consulting/strategy bits of it- I would strongly recommend working first.