CFO.com's virtual event on June 17, "Navigating the Corporate Tax Frontier," brought together finance and accounting leaders to tackle the profession's most pressing challenges.
Across multiple panel discussions, speakers addressed everything from viral tax scams on social media to the inevitability of tax increases and the intersection of artificial intelligence and human expertise. Here are some of the most valuable insights from the event.
Human expertise bridges AI power and business impact
In the “How CFOs can future-proof their tax function” session, panelists all agreed that while artificial intelligence can speed up processes, it is humans who remain essential to interpret the outputs, validate accuracy and turn the data into actionable insights.
“You can have all of this AI data, you can have all of this firepower to be able to get things done faster, to calculate more, to forecast better, but your ability to connect to other humans with that data and make a good information or forecast for the business, or become strategic as a unit, as a team, that's ultimately what's going to win,” said Dean Quiambao, a technology industry leader at Armanino. “We believe in AI-powered humans, the people who have domain expertise that use AI, they're going to be unstoppable.”
Tim Mathis, head of tax and accounting, controller of Zelestra, added: “The ability for humans to interpret the data that's coming out of the AI is going to be key. People come into play when they can look at an output and go, ‘Yeah, that seems directionally reasonable, that's about what I expect.’ It doesn't mean it's exactly right, but it's directionally in the right format and looks reasonable. It's a message I can deliver that the non-tax people or the non-accountants will understand and take action. We're just providing input to empower the business to expand or increase what it's doing; that's where people are going to come into play.”
Raj Basi, vice president of Tax at AEG Fuels, offered a real-time example. “Just a couple of days ago, we asked two different AI tools a question, and we got two different answers. Same question, two different answers, and it required us, as the tax subject matter experts, to review it and come down on what was the right side at the end of the day,” Basi said.
Not if, but when for tax increases
Drawing parallels to past economic crises, Blake Oliver, co-host of The Accounting Podcast, warned during the “Tax at a turning point: What CFOs need to know” panel that tax increases are inevitable given the size of U.S. debt.
“It will come after we keep on printing dollars, because it's easier to print money and devalue the dollar than it is to raise taxes,” Oliver said. “And when neither party is interested in solving the problem through true fiscal means, and instead we print money, we'll end up in probably a similar cycle as the 1970s stagflation type of environment.”
He added, “I know nobody wants to hear that, and I wasn't around for that, but I know it wasn't very much fun, and history repeats itself. We have examples of this throughout history … and I don't know if there's any reason to expect it would be any different for us, so it's going to be a challenge. I would look to history and recommend reading Ray Dalio's books on this, because he's done a lot of research on it, and he shows the pattern throughout time. If we read history and we understand it, then we can be prepared.”
Tax scams and R&D credit relief
During the keynote address, CPA and tax attorney Jasmine DiLucci highlighted IRS red flags, the impact of reduced IRS staffing and addressed trending social media scams, such as misinterpretations of tax codes.
DiLucci noted how most tax fraud schemes start by misusing real code sections or court cases. She said tax scheme promoters will find obscure or outdated cases, and then falsely claim that those authorities create a loophole.
“Every tax fraud scheme always starts with a code section, always starts with the court case. This one guy that has half a million followers has a court case on his website and he misspelled the name of the court case and it's from 1911, which is before income tax was ratified in the United States, and it was about an act or statute that doesn't exist anymore regarding a tax that wasn't income tax,” said DiLucci. “So they just take random things, and then they start saying it means X. Even when I posted about it, someone in the comments said, ‘No, he's got court cases. I think you don't know.” And I am like, ‘Do I not know? Because I am pretty sure you don’t know.”
DiLucci also discussed the impact she saw from the R&D credit reform as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“I saw a lot of business owners in 2022 holding their breath, hoping that Congress would continue the benefit. Then [those expenses] used to be still deductible, and then all of a sudden it was, ‘Well, now you get to amortize it.’ So I had a lot of clients who had a sudden overnight shock, where you're like, ‘Well, yeah, I want the credit, but I thought we were at a loss, now we have this insane profit because we just had to add back all of the expenses.’ And from a cash flow perspective, it became a problem because if you think about the typical business that's doing R&D, they don't always have a bunch of extra cash. A lot of times, they're spending their money on R&D development … so the new bill did right, and it restored it retroactively. It was a huge change.”
CPA as a flexible, foundational credential
In the “Tax in a post-150-hour CPA world" session, speakers emphasized that the CPA continues to be a great foundational skill set to be successful in business, not just finance and accounting.
“You should at least get your CPA and then get some good experience,” said Omar Choucair, CFO of Trintech. “Then you can do anything you want — go to law school, go into marketing, go into sales — but you can't do it the other way. Our view is you have to start in accounting, because that's what gives you the base, and then you can do whatever you want.”
Diane Matson, an accounting professor at the University of St. Thomas, said that by opening more flexible pathways to CPA licensure, the profession can compete for top talent.
“I don't know if I agree that the CPA will be easier to obtain. I think it's going to be easier in the sense of having different options to pursue… we do have some competition. More than some years ago, a person who's interested in quantitative issues could go into data analytics or business analytics,” said Matson.
It wasn't really an option 20 or 30 years ago, so I feel like we have more competition for these highly motivated students who like to work with numbers in some way,” she continued. “The pathways are great, having that other option. I think even with or without that, we'd still have some competition from other degrees and career paths that these sort of students would be looking at finance, data analytics, accounting — they're all sort of competing in my book.”
The "Navigating the Corporate Tax Frontier" event is now available for on-demand viewing here.
