Tax folks,, are we going to be automated in 5years?

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Uh, no. Some Associate level tasks hopefully are. But clients will still be seeking advice from real people. Become more consultative.

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Staff level for sure. Senior to an extent but there will (for now) still need some level of review of the automated output. I already see it happening in most areas of my team's work in the years I've been here

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RPA coming your way!

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Tasks will be automated. However people who understand the output, can review, understand where issues are in a tax return, balance sheet , etc and can come up with planning ideas or ways to help will continue to be in demand and needed. If all you do is enter numbers in now without further understanding what you are doing and why, then yes, you will be automated

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It’s going to be interesting to see how future classes that have never had to prepare the product will be as far as development. Preparing cemented a lot of my technical knowledge

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TM1 - that is a very fair point and one I am in agreement with. I personally believe all new staff will still need to prepare [X] number of returns before being a senior and before anything gets sent to India, etc. That experience is necessary for you to learn how to review

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Yes, you will be. PwC has moved most tax work to India and accelerate in coming years. Look around your office, there are fewer and fewer Associates and Senior as experienced staffs are either promoted or leave. US Tax Manager will be like Project Manager. They are selliing out the future for short term profit.

How do they automate your work? They don't know ... yet. I was in some of these meetings and no one knows what they are talking about. Just a lot of hot air and BSing. But however, this is very important to them, so they will figure it out eventually. So be careful

From my experience they are definitely trying their best to.

Probably not 5 years. Maybe close enough to say so and so was the first to do it. Automation requires consistent inputs and consistent outputs. Simple in theory but there’s too much variety across clients. It’s coming though. And it will have to to make tax prep affordable and staff will have to move up to a review role, etc

Wouldn’t all clients need to use the same bookkeeping for this to happen? What about more complex things like accrual to cash. And consolidated c corps or fiscal year end s corps that own companies which are 12/31 year end (yes it exists). Too much variety to automate. Simple 1040’s yes, otherwise I don’t see it happening

RSM1 - you don’t understand the technology. What it does is mimic key strokes. You teach the software what you do and it then does it in the same order that you would. As such it doesn’t matter the software used, etc. It is a program that gets installed over any software. It learns what to open, what files and then cells to pull from, where to populate them etc. It does the exact same thing you or a client would do. But it doesn’t complain, it doesn’t ask for a raise, it doesn’t take vacations, it doesn’t need health benefits, etc. However it does get stuck if something isn’t where it is supposed to be. Further it doesn’t interpret what goes in or comes out. As such smart people who understand the law and what needs to be where and why and how to help do planning when the results aren’t what the client wants/expected will always be needed. As such, large hiring classes are coming to an end. Also we are seeking some people with data analytics degrrees etc. This is all not happening overnight. I will take time. If all you do is basically data entry with no further understanding then you likely don’t have a future in the B4. If you can do what I said above and understand the data, how to manipulate and turn it into value added planning then you’ll have a job for a long long time

Don't feel bad OP, they're working hard on automating audit and advisory as well.

As the saying goes, can't beat them, join them. Learn and be the automation programmer.

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