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Survey: Tax Professionals Mostly Optimistic About Generative AI But in No Rush to Adopt It

By:
Ruth Singleton
Published Date:
Jul 26, 2024

A new survey conducted by Thomson Reuters found that tax and accounting firm professionals generally believe that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) will be a part of their future, but most are still in the early stages of determining the business implications of the technology, as well as how it can be adapted into their policies and training programs.

For its report, 2024 Generative AI in tax firms, Thomson Reuters surveyed 330 tax and accounting firm respondents, also asking them what their clients expect regarding GenAI use, and areas where the firms may need more investment before widespread adoption can occur.

The survey found that 73 percent of respondents believe that GenAI could be applied to their work, while 21 percent said they don’t know, and 5 percent said it couldn’t. The survey also found that 52 percent of the respondents believe that GenAI should be applied to their work, 30 percent said they don’t know, and 18 percent believe it shouldn’t.

In addition, 47 percent of the respondents said they are excited or hopeful about GenAI. Another 36 percent said they are hesitant, while just 17 percent are concerned or fearful. The primary reason for the respondents' optimism is the technology's potential for increased efficiency and productivity, while the primary reason for their pessimism is concern around unethical usage.

So far, few of the respondents have actually integrated GenAI into their practices, the survey found. While 28 percent of them said that their firms have used open-source GenAI tools such as Chat GPT for their work, only 9 percent have used proprietary tax-specific GenAI tools. Thomson Reuters noted that while 44 percent of the respondents expect to use tax-specific GenAI within the next three years, the report, as a whole, “signals a tax and accounting space that is planning for the incoming GenAI evolution, but one that is hesitant to make the move.”

Other key findings include the following:

• Only 10 percent of the respondents said that their firms were using GenAI on an organization-wide level, but an additional 40 percent said their firms were either planning or considering GenAI use. The primary areas where respondents were using or planning to use GenAI were accounting/ bookkeeping (84 percent), tax research (84 percent), tax return preparation (69 percent), and tax advisory services (67 percent).

• Firms are split as to how this technology will affect their business model, with 40 percent believing GenAI may lead to increased billing rates. While 56 percent of the respondents said their firms expect to pass through at least some portion of the cost of GenAI use to their customers, fully 92 percent said that their clients have provided no direction yet on the use of GenAI.

• While 24 percent  of tax firm respondents said they believe GenAI may lead to new job roles or expectations, this figure is significantly lower than that of corporate tax respondents who said they believe the same (40 percent). In addition, just 14 percent of tax firm respondents said that their organization had provided training around GenAI, and 25 percent said GenAI knowledge would be a consideration when hiring.

The report summarized its findings as follows: “While some respondents said their firms are experimenting with public tools such as ChatGPT for tax work, few firms have rolled out GenAI systems in a systematic way for tax and accounting work, particularly as it relates to tax-specific GenAI systems. There remains a lack of training around these tools as well, and many firms have not fully determined what GenAI may ultimately mean for their businesses. At the same time, however, there is a recognition that GenAI will be the future of tax and accounting work. A majority of tax firm respondents said they believe that GenAI can and should be used in the workplace. Similarly, nearly half of respondents reported their primary sentiment towards the technology as excited or hopeful for its impact on the future of the tax & accounting profession.”

The report also quoted one of the survey respondents, a shareholder at a US.-based tax firm, who expressed optimism about the technology, saying, “Many changes may be needed. But I believe the more we can get technology working for us, instead of us constantly working on technology items, we will all be better off and will be in a position to make our work less labor intensive, thereby, in part, helping offset the growing shortage of CPAs entering the profession. It raises the CPA to the higher reviewer stage on items.”

 

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