Articles
AI and the work of a tax department
Practical examples and lessons from working with AI, including the limits and the decisions that stay with you.
Latest · Skills · Jul 2026 · 7 min
The New Way of Working with Excel
Working on Excel through an AI puts you one layer removed from the sheet. A practical look at the two tools that matter now, the in-workbook add-in and the external AI that writes and maintains your automations.
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General The Cash Cost of AI Automation
Why AI cost surprises even the companies that can afford it, and what a tax department should do about it.
Jun 2026 · 10 min -
DISRUPTION ≠ DESTRUCTION
Reports about AI and jobs prompt a practical question for tax professionals: which part of your work can you start improving?
May 2026 · 15 min -
Why a Superpower Isn't Enough
Learning to use AI and finding a worthwhile problem for it to solve are two different tasks.
Mar 2026 · 4 min -
Volume Is the Enemy: Automating for Attention
Automating recurring Excel tasks gives tax teams a practical way to reduce the volume of work competing for their attention.
Feb 2026 · 7 min -
Architects, Agents, and Excel Machines: Preparing the Next Generation of Tax Operations
Excel workbooks can be connected and automated with AI-written VBA, while tax professionals design the process and review the results.
Feb 2026 · 13 min -
English as Code; LLMs as Operating Systems
Reusable prompts can act as programs that run on a language model, with examples for processing mail and researching tax changes.
Jan 2026 · 14 min -
The most potent application of AI
Using AI to attempt unfamiliar work can build your abilities, provided you take time to understand and improve what it produces.
Jan 2026 · 8 min -
Your Digital Foundations Matter More Than Ever
Tax teams can prepare for AI agents by documenting their workflows and automating repeatable steps in the tools they already use.
Jul 2025 · 4 min -
No Time to Learn, No Room to Fix: The Catch-22 of Modern Tax Teams
AI can help tax teams document processes and share knowledge, but learning to use it competes with the work already filling their day.
Jun 2025 · 5 min -
You Can Just Do Things
AI can help you attempt unfamiliar work, but sound judgment and lasting skill still require practice.
Jun 2025 · 13 min -
Other articles From Manual to AI-Augmented: A Practical Exercise in Tax Research
A federal budget exercise shows how to use AI for tax research, check its output, and prepare updates for different audiences.
Mar 2025 · 11 min -
Literacy AI Literacy: Communicating with the Machines
Different tasks call for different ways of communicating with AI, from direct instructions to collaborative problem-solving.
Feb 2025 · 7 min -
General A Profession at an Inflection Point
Tax professionals can use AI to rethink routine work while retaining responsibility for review, judgment, and compliance.
Feb 2025 · 13 min -
General Four Problems Facing our Departments
Tax departments face four connected challenges: workload, complexity, team development, and keeping knowledge as people move on.
Jan 2025 · 7 min -
Other articles The Most Advanced o1 Model Still Needs a Professional Behind It.
A follow-up test of OpenAI's o1 model shows why a plausible treasury answer still needs a tax professional's judgment.
Dec 2024 · 4 min -
General Is genAI part of your 2025 planning?
Training is part of preparing a tax department to use AI for tasks such as workbook automation and data analysis.
Oct 2024 · 2 min -
General Testing GPT o1 preview (a Tax POV)
Kyle tests GPT o1-preview on a cross-border cash movement problem and shows where a tax professional had to redirect its reasoning.
Sep 2024 · 8 min -
(Re)starting your genAI journey
A guide written at GPT-4o's release explains how to start using generative AI and keep professional oversight of its output.
Jun 2024 · 8 min -
Topical Research with ChatGPT
A structured ChatGPT research process helps organize a broad topic, find relevant information, and check what the model returns.
Feb 2024 · 11 min -
ChatGPT takes on the "Volume" Problem
Three examples from a tax department show how ChatGPT helps with monthly data processing, workbook macros, and scanned mail.
Feb 2024 · 9 min -
The Rise of Rogue Prompters: When your Employees Outpace Your Organization's AI Maturity
Kyle describes his early experiments with ChatGPT and the challenge of putting AI to work inside a cautious organization.
Dec 2023 · 5 min
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