How to develop an AI tax compliance strategy

As regulatory bodies continue to sort out the tax implications of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), keeping up with compliance has become part of the daily grind for tax and accounting firms. But what if technology could help? 

According to the Thomson Reuters 2025 Future of Professionals Report, 79% of tax, audit, and accounting pros expect AI to have a transformational impact on their industry within the next five years. Yet only 14% of tax firms currently have a defined AI strategy in place. For your firm, that gap should spell enormous opportunity. 

Here’s a look at how a carefully-planned AI tax compliance strategy powered by fiduciary-grade technology can help your firm stay efficient and profitable in a chaotic landscape. 

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The impact of AI on business protection

How your AI tax compliance strategy strengthens consulting

How AI can track new tax laws for you

Can tax firms trust results from AI?

Finding your AI tax compliance strategy 

The impact of AI on business protection 

Keeping pace with tax law changes and regulatory compliance has always been central to protecting a business. Failure carries real consequences — penalties, reputational damage, and lost clients. That pressure is only intensifying: the Thomson Reuters 2026 AI in Professional Services Report makes clear that most professionals understand AI-driven change is already here — and that regulatory complexity is a key driver of it.  

AI is now a practical response to that challenge, rather than a theoretical one. GenAI use has nearly doubled, with 40% of organizations now using it (up from 22% the previous year) and over 80% of current users engage with it weekly.

In tax specifically, AI is already delivering results across several high-stakes areas:  

Improving data quality to reduce audit exposure 
Flagging transfer pricing trends before they become liabilities 
Identifying contract-level risk patterns at a scale manual review cannot match 

However, adoption is only part of the picture. Only 19% of professionals say their organizations track AI return on investment, and another 27% don’t know whether ROI is measured at all. Around 40% also report receiving contradictory guidance from clients and leadership on AI tool usage, which indicates that many firms are moving fast without a clear framework to guide them.  

Without a proper AI tax compliance strategy that factors in transparency, data security, and success metrics, efficiency gains tend to get quietly swallowed by the confusion they were meant to eliminate.

How your AI tax compliance strategy strengthens consulting

Strategic consulting has become a more significant part of the practice mix, and for good reason. As regulatory complexity grows, clients need guidance on what the rules mean for their business, not just confirmation that they’re following them. 

AI is a direct enabler of that transition. By handling routine compliance tasks and tracking regulatory changes, it frees up the time professionals need to focus on higher-value work. The talent case is equally strong: more than 80% of professionals who use GenAI engage with it weekly, which points to something beyond novelty.

When AI is genuinely embedded in day-to-day work, it changes what the job actually feels like — less time on repetitive tasks, more time on the work that requires real judgment. That matters for recruitment and retention. Firms that can offer meaningful, varied work with clearer avenues for career growth have a competitive edge in attracting talent.

Opportunities for agentic AI-powered firms

As agentic AI takes on multi-step compliance workflows autonomously, new specialist roles are emerging to manage it, particularly at the international level where aligning your AI tax compliance strategy with regulatory requirements across jurisdictions is becoming a discipline in its own right.  

The firms that move deliberately here stand to gain on multiple fronts: 

More capacity for strategic consulting and client advisory work 
A stronger proposition for talent who want intellectually engaging roles 
New service lines built around AI governance and cross-border regulatory alignment 
Productivity gains that compound as agentic AI matures 

The compliance burden isn’t going away. But with the right AI tax compliance strategy in place, it no longer has to define how a firm spends its time.

How AI can track new tax laws for you

Staying current on tax law has never been a simple task, but legislation like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (which permanently extended TCJA provisions while introducing new deductions for tips, overtime, and seniors, and raising the SALT cap to $40,000) illustrates just how quickly the ground can shift under a 1040 preparer’s feet. 

AI-powered tax research tools are changing how firms respond to that complexity. Rather than manually searching for relevant authority and piecing together how it applies to a client’s situation, professionals can get targeted, reliable answers in a fraction of the time. The practical difference is significant: 

Faster identification of how new provisions (like the OBBBA’s tip and overtime deductions) affect individual client situations 
More confident analysis, grounded in fiduciary-grade sources rather than general-purpose AI 
Less time on research mechanics, more time on client-facing advisory work 

Agentic AI is pushing this further. Rather than simply surfacing relevant guidance, newer systems have AI tax compliance strategies that reason through multi-step research workflows (cross-referencing provisions, flagging client-specific implications, and drafting conclusions) with minimal manual input. 

The result is an AI tax research strategy that’s faster, more thorough, and better positioned to keep pace with a tax code that rarely stands still. 

Can tax firms trust results from AI?

The honest answer depends on which AI you’re using. General-purpose tools are trained on broad, unverified data; useful for drafting emails, less suited for determining whether a client’s tip income qualifies for the OBBBA deduction.

The stakes in tax work are too high for that kind of ambiguity, and professionals know it. 76% of respondents in our 2026 AI Report cited “Potential for inaccurate responses as their #1 concern.

Tax-specific AI built on authoritative sources (e.g. Checkpoint) operates differently. Fiduciary-grade protocols ensure that answers are grounded in verified primary sources, not pattern-matched from the open web. That distinction matters when a client’s liability or an IRS audit is on the line. 

How should tax firms double-check AI results?

Even with reliable AI, verification remains a professional responsibility. A few practical approaches: 

Trace the source: Quality tax AI cites its authority. If it doesn’t, treat the output with caution
Apply professional judgment: AI surfaces relevant guidance — the analysis still belongs to the practitioner
Test edge cases: Run known scenarios through any new tool before relying on it for complex client work 
Stay current on limitations: AI tools evolve quickly; and so do the laws they interpret 

Finding your AI tax compliance strategy 

In a highly regulated profession like tax and accounting, the power of AI and the role it can play in helping professionals stay on top of tax law changes and help ensure tax regulatory compliance is not to be underestimated. 

To see more thoughts, stats, insights, and use cases for AI in the tax profession, download the exclusive AI in Professional Services Report for 2026.