The Real AI Story in Tax and Audit Isn't Adoption — It's Impact
For tax and audit leaders, the challenge is not deciding whether AI matters but ensuring it is applied in ways that are trusted, defensible, and transformative.
The accounting profession has spent the better part of a decade navigating the hype cycle around AI. First came the fear and predictions that automation would hollow out the profession. Then came the skepticism. And now, finally, we've (at Thomson Reuters) arrived at something more valuable than either: proof.
The 2026 AI in Professional Services Report from Thomson Reuters tells a striking story. Sixty-two percent of professionals are using generative AI daily. Thirty-four percent of tax firms are deploying it at an organizational level — up from 21% just a year ago. And yet only 19% of those firms are actually measuring the ROI of their AI tools. More than half aren’t measuring at all, and the remainder have no idea how their firms are measuring AI's output. The pace of change is accelerating faster than most firms anticipated, and the window for early-mover advantage is closing.
But adoption alone isn’t the headline. The real story is what’s happening inside the firms that have moved from experimentation to transformation.
"Tax and audit firms are no longer asking whether AI will affect the profession — that answer is already clear. The real question now is which firms will turn adoption into measurable advantage. The leaders will be those that move beyond experimentation and deploy AI that professionals can trust: fiduciary-grade AI tools built on authoritative content, designed for high-stakes work, and capable of delivering both efficiency and defensible results." (Elizabeth Beastrom, president, Tax, Audit & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters)
Leading firms are putting AI to work
Our research (at Thomson Reuters) shows that just 14% of tax firms say agentic AI is currently part of their workflow, but 80% expect it to be central to how their organization operates within five years. The question for every firm leader is whether they’re building for that future today or planning to catch up later.
At Thomson Reuters, we launched CoCounsel Tax & Audit in March 2025 — not as a pilot, but as a fully deployed, purpose-built agentic AI platform. In the months since, thousands of firms have embedded it into their daily workflows, and the results are measurable. The CoCounsel solutions include CoCounsel Tax & Audit, Ready to Review and Ready to Advise — tools that are helping firms transform the way they do tax research, tax preparation and strategic advisory. And users are reaping the benefits — with average time savings of 32% per task. Research that once consumed three to five hours now takes fifteen to thirty minutes. As Allison Stevens, Tax Partner at Copeland Buhl, one of the top 20 accounting and advisory firms in the Midwest, puts it: “It’s a super easy way to ask very complicated tax questions from a reliable source… Everybody has said they can’t live without this anymore.”
What sets CoCounsel apart is the fiduciary-grade AI it’s built on: drawing from trusted sources including more than 12 million Thomson Reuters Checkpoint expert-authored pieces, plus primary sources including IRS, FASB, GASB, AICPA, and IFRS. Every answer is cited, and every output is defensible. That matters in a profession where accuracy is non-negotiable.
George Crowell, Principal at Virginia-based firm Harris, Hardy & Johnstone, captures what time savings means in practice: “Time is worth more than anything else. Our industry is so choked for time that any minute I get back could mean an extra evening with my wife or a vacation without stress.”
Built for the work — not retrofitted to it
What I hear most often from firm leaders evaluating AI tools is a version of the same concern: how do I know I can trust it? It’s the right question. General-purpose AI can generate plausible-sounding answers. But the high-stakes work tax and audit professionals do day-to-day means they need answers they can stand behind.
Matthew Hauger, Senior Tax Managing Director at Arizona-based firm Jansen & Company CPAs, tried several AI tools before landing on CoCounsel. His verdict: “It saves us time, but not just time — there’s an accuracy and a confidence element there… CoCounsel shines for deep research. Nobody can touch it.”
AI is no longer a future consideration for tax and audit firms. It’s reshaping the profession now, across firms of every size. At Thomson Reuters, we have moved beyond promise to delivery — in CoCounsel Tax & Audit, providing AI technology that is already transforming how high-stakes work gets done.
Disclosures:
Feature content was written by Elizabeth Beastrom, President of Tax, Audit & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters, and was issued as an official Thomson Reuters press announcement dated April 15, 2026, at 8:00 AM PT. This content is provided by Insightful Accountant content for informational and educational purposes. Minor edits may have been made to ensure editorial clarity and identify the authoring source apart from Insightful Accountant.
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