A recent survey has found a great degree of both excitement and concern about the rise of generative AI in tax work, with slightly more of the latter than the former.
This is according to a recent survey of tax professionals conducted by
They found that 50% of practitioners were either "hesitant" (which was the most common response overall) or "concerned" about generative AI. In contrast, 47% were either "hopeful" or "excited." Only 3% were actively "fearful." This shows that while there is a lot of enthusiasm about generative AI, there is also a lot of doubt.
Those who were more enthusiastic cited reasons such as new opportunities for productivity and efficiency gains, business growth, streamlining work processes, and the potential transformation of the industry as a whole. Conversely, those who were less enthusiastic primarily pointed to the potential to exploit GenAI for unethical or fraudulent purposes. Others were concerned about an over-reliance on GenAI within the tax industry and concerns around job displacement.
Regardless of their stance, however, 73% of tax professionals overall said generative AI can be applied to tax work, with only 5% saying it can't. At the same time, however, when asked whether generative AI should be applied to tax work, 52% said yes and 18% said no, indicating that while many recognize that theoretically the technology could be used, less are convinced it ought to.
The survey also found that firms have been a little slow to adopt these tools generally. Only 10% of respondents said their organization already uses generative AI firm-wide, with an additional 13% planning to in the future. Conversely, a full 49% have no plans to deploy generative AI and 27% are still weighing their options. For those who do use generative AI, the most common use cases, both at 84%, were "accounting/bookkeeping" and "tax research." Tax return preparation was third, at 69%.
This slowness could be due to lack of input from clients. A full 82% of firms said clients have provided no direction one way or another on the use of generative AI versus the 1% whose clients want them to use more of it and 2% whose clients want them to use less of it. Results were similar for corporate accountants when it comes to requests from firms to use generative AI.
"Perhaps because of this seeming lack of urgency from clients, tax & accounting firms are largely hands-off in guiding GenAI use internally," said Thomson Reuters.
The poll also found that tax professionals believe that the use of generative AI means they will be able to charge higher rates: 2% said it would be significant and 38% said it would be slight. In contrast, only 6% thought rates would decrease. Similarly, 29% plan to pass on the costs of generative AI investments to customers across the board, and 27% plan to do so on a case by case basis. Just 27% said they would absorb the costs themselves.
