AI Isn’t Erasing Tax Careers. It’s Rewriting Them | ARC

Firms must build new pathways that develop reviewers, judgment and client-facing skills.Accounting ARCWith Donny Shimamoto, Liz Mason, and Byron PatrickCenter for Accounting TransformationArtificial intelligence may not eliminate the entry-level tax professional. But it is dismantling the job that many firms still use to train one.That's the conversation driving a new episode of the Accounting ARC podcast featuring Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC and founder and inspiration architect for the Center for Accounting Transformation; and Liz Mason, CPA, CEO of High Rock Accounting.The conversation begins with a small tax firm that hires six interns each year and teaches them to prepare returns much as earlier generations learned: working from paper documents, identifying relevant numbers, mapping those figures to tax forms, and entering the data into tax software. MORE Accounting ARC: Accounting Internships Need an Upgrade | The CPA Career Nobody Talks About | Conference Season Exposes Accounting's Knowledge Gap | The Feedback Mistake That Costs You Your Best People | Is Your Boss Really the Problem? | Most Accountants Are Missing This AI Shift | AI Can Fix Your Workflow—or Break It in Seconds | Efficiency Is the Wrong Goal for AI | Accounting’s Hidden Talent Risk: The Sandwich Generation | Built Fast. Sold Faster. Broken Later? The Truth About Accounting Tech | Recognize When You Need to Recharge Before You Burn Out The firm owner sees the process as an apprenticeship that helps students bridge the gap between an individual tax course and real-world preparation. Shimamoto sees value in teaching interns how information moves from source documents to a completed return. Mason agrees with the objective but challenges the method.“From a holistic learning exploration, sure, yes, that is a way to learn,” Mason says. “From a where-we-are-today perspective, I think that’s a giant disservice to these interns.”