AI predictions for tax leaders: PwC

Summary

AI is positioning tax at the center of the finance data ecosystem, enabling faster, more direct access to actionable insights.
Automation and AI-driven controls can improve accuracy, risk detection, and day-to-day tax operations.
Tax professionals will shift to strategic advisory, supported by a new AI-enabled operating model with evolving skills and roles.

As a tax leader, you probably know the pattern. Your company pours money into new tech but your function is one of the last to benefit. That may soon change. As AI advances, it’s getting clearer how businesses can benefit—quickly—from a targeted tax AI strategy.

At PwC, we’ve completed our ninth annual AI Business Predictions. They lay out our big AI ideas on strategies, ways to achieve value that are both transformative and measurable, workforce shifts, the list goes on. And with growing opportunities for tax to create impact, we’re adding a tax-focused set of AI predictions. Because this year it won’t be enough for tax functions to have pilots. Value, differentiation, and even relevance could depend on embedding AI into tax controls, forecasting, and support.

1. Tax at the center: Your new role in the finance data ecosystem

AI puts you at the center of your company’s finance data ecosystem. With AI, you can embed tax logic into workflows, systems, and platforms across your company—spanning areas such as tax basis calculations, cross-territory structures, currency movements and their impacts, and responses to investor inquiries. That would slash the number of exchanges with other functions to get the data you need in a form you can use. In many cases, you can access the data directly and turn it into value more efficiently.

AI is already helping many tax professionals quickly execute formerly labor-intensive tasks.

It can flag data discrepancies, duplicate transactions, and period-over-period fluctuations.
It can generate cash tax projections by jurisdiction, highlight material tax risks, and offers tax-informed alternatives to contemplated business changes.
It helps validate completeness as AI agents coordinate reviews with reconciliations at key checkpoints, automates data for human oversight, and delivers audit-ready documentation.

Together, these and other new sources of tax value from AI could add up to a leap ahead in day-to-day tax operations, making them more data- and risk informed.

At PwC, we're already seeing results in-house and with our clients, things like predictive controls, dynamic risk sensing, automated evidence generation, and stronger regulatory readiness.

2. New value for the business: Scenario-based forecasting and planning

Thanks to AI, you can have scenario-based forecasts and data-driven simulations at your fingertips, giving you the opportunity to play a growing role in business planning.

Assess prospective or recently passed legislation and regulations, such as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act or the OECD Side-by Side package.
Conduct multi-scenario simulations that game out potential shifts in interest rates, trade/tariff policy, and shifting supply chain structures.
Better forecast effective tax rates, cash tax positions, deferred taxes, and so on.

These and other scenario-based forecasts can yield insights to support critical decisions on everything from cash tax considerations to corporate structure.

Such tax-driven value creation—providing forward-looking insights on potential policy, geopolitical, market, or strategic shifts—is rapidly becoming table stakes.

3. AI raises the floor for tax, tax professionals lift the ceiling

As AI keeps “raising the floor” for tax, regulators still expect “a human in the loop.” Professional standards require review and sign-off on tax filings, including ones produced with AI outputs. Given these requirements—and how other stakeholders also expect humans to make key tax decisions—you’ll have to take on new responsibilities of overseeing and improving AI data, models, and outputs. That will mean new skills and Responsible AI processes.

AI can also offer new ways for tax professionals to “lift the ceiling.” As you spend less time on routine compliance activities, you can shift your attention to strategic advice for the C-suite. Only skilled people, with tax expertise and vision, can craft a high-value tax strategy.

For example, as courts consider issues like tariffs and trade policy, AI can model outcomes. But it’s tax professionals who must explain the implications, assess direct and indirect risks, and come up with a plan.

4. A new tax operating model emerges: New skills, roles, and cross-functional capabilities

AI’s advances will probably bring a new tax operating model that can formalize the new “division of labor” between people and AI—and makes it easier for your people to review AI’s outputs and work more closely with the business and other stakeholders.

In practice, here’s how it might look. Your teams will use AI with greater precision and speed, focusing more on identifying problems, articulating a vision for a solution, and developing a product mindset. People will adopt new roles, such as tax data lead, forward deployed engineer, and model governance lead. New processes such as structured rotations and mentoring will enable new mindsets and cross-functional collaboration. You’ll increasingly leverage tax AI-as-a-service offerings that give you access to tested AI tools, security, and governance.

This kind of operating model is starting to transform tax functions across the country—but it will only happen in yours if you take action.

How to create an AI-enabled tax function

AI success in tax is coming into focus, underpinned by three core pillars, which you can start building today.

Take practical steps to shift the culture. Culture change isn’t easy, but practical steps can make it a reality. Lead by example by using AI in your daily tasks. Embed AI into the tools and workflows your teams rely on, making it easier to use for both routine tasks and higher-value outputs like scenario-based forecasting. Redefine roles, incentives, and benchmarks to align with AI goals, including AI governance and finding new ways for AI to turn financial data into tax value.
Help your people grow. Give your teams the time and psychological safety to experiment with a “fail fast” approach. To use AI to boost their speed, capacity, and ability to advise the business, they’ll need new skills—and not just in AI. As they deliver more strategic insights and embed tax logic into workflows across the enterprise, for example, they’ll need a deeper understanding of the business’s needs. It will also be vital that you provide clarity on current and future roles, mechanisms to scale up your people’s leading AI ideas, and change management that keeps your teams excited about what AI can help them achieve.
Create nimble teams—with new tax value enablers. An AI-powered tax operating model can help accelerate value and strengthen alignment with business goals. Rather than relying on large IT teams and lengthy cycles to deliver a tax application or tool, a small AI-enabled team can move quickly and deliver tangible results—such as a customized reconciliation engine, a cockpit designed to follow your unique tax activities in real time, and more.