From Timesheets to Trusted Advisor

This conversation is one that we're having a lot lately, but as artificial intelligence really becomes embedded in tax practice, firms are learning and discovering how it's not just changing how work gets done, it's changing how clients perceive value.

how firms think about pricing, and even how regulators are viewing professional responsibilities.

So we're going to really get into that today, and we're going to talk about some new research on AI adoption in tax practice.

We'll talk about a growing shift towards value-based pricing or why you know, why we think you should really be thinking about that if you haven't been already.

And then also we'll address that IRS preliminary guidelines on responsible AI use, what that means for us, what we should pay attention to, and, you know, what it should make us think about.

So Ben, Blue Jay has been tracking along with CPA.com, tracking AI adoption among tax professionals for several years now.

So and we'll actually put a copy of the report in the show notes.

So if you want to dig deeper, but just kind of talk about what surprised you the most from the survey results.

What the survey results show is there's increasing adoption and faster adoption than last year's survey that we did.

So this year we surveyed a thousand CPAs across America, asked them a litany of questions about AI and tax research, how it's affecting them and their practice.

It was amazing that the adoption rate far surpassed what people predicted a year ago when we last surveyed everyone.

At that time, about a third of the respondents had adopted AI for tax research.

And I think about another 20% said they would be doing so in the next few years.

This year, 60% already had.

So the numbers were running ahead of... where the respondents a year ago expected themselves to be, and a further third said they were going to, and they had plans in the coming, It was a little bit unspecified, but in the coming years to adopt it.

So over 90% of respondents are saying, yes, AI for tax research is something that they have either brought on board or are going to be bringing on board.

But that wasn't the surprising thing to me, April.

The surprising thing to me is... is what people wanna do with the time that they're saving.

So there were three big outcomes that people consistently checked off when they were responding.

And as you say, the details are in the report, so if people wanna really dive into it.

But the headline is, people wanted to respond to their clients faster.

That was number one.

They wanted to achieve better work-life balance with some of those time savings.

And then they wanted to deliver higher quality advice.

And I think there's a fourth thing lurking there, which we did not offer as an option for them to select.