What CPA.com’s CEO sees next for AI, tax, and the profession

Sponsored by TaxBandits

In this episode, Erik Asgeirsson of CPA.com looks back and looks ahead — to the next weeks and months and also to the future of AI in the accounting profession.

Asgeirsson explains how AI’s acceleration in tax, audit, and client advisory services builds on lessons learned during the cloud computing transformation. He outlines where firms are seeing the biggest opportunities, why tax is emerging as a key area for innovation, and how new AI capabilities are reshaping workflows and insights.

The conversation also covers practical steps for firms to get started with AI, along with the risks to manage and the long-term shift toward higher-value advisory services.

Asgeirsson was one of the creators of AICPA Town Hall back in spring of 2020. He talked about Town Hall’s guiding principles, which have shaped the show and resonate with its thousands of viewers today.

Resources mentioned in the episode:

• CPA.com’s AI resource page.
• AICPA ENGAGE agenda.
• Digital CPA Conference in December.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• How lessons from the rise of cloud computing and client advisory services can guide firms’ AI strategies.
• Why tax is emerging as a leading area for AI-driven transformation, from research to new preparation tools.
• What recent advances in AI models mean for CPAs, including stronger data analysis, automation, and integration into everyday tools.
• How small and midsize firms can get started with AI.
• Why embracing AI can lead to expansion for firms into higher-value advisory work, even as they manage risks such as data security and governance.
• Asgeirsson’s reflection on the growth of AICPA Town Hall from a pandemic-era resource to a high-production platform shaping firm strategy and responding directly to member questions.
• One JofA-related highlight that Asgeirsson is looking forward to at ENGAGE.

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.

Transcript

Neil Amato: Hello, listeners. Welcome to another episode of the Journal of Accountancy podcast. This is Neil Amato with the JofA. Today we’re discussing a host of topics with Erik Asgeirsson, the CEO of CPA.com. The conversation on AI, CAS, tax transformation, and more is coming up after this brief sponsor message.

[Sponsor message]

Amato: Welcome back. As I said, our guest is Erik Asgeirsson, a name and voice many of you know from AICPA Town Hall. Erik, glad to have you back on the JofA podcast.

Erik Asgeirsson: Hey Neil, it’s great to be with you today.

Amato: Thank you. We’re glad to have you. First, cloud computing fundamentally reshaped how firms deliver services. As AI drives an equally significant transformation, how is CPA.com drawing on lessons from that cloud era to help firms?

Asgeirsson: Great question, Neil, and it’s something that we think a lot about. Cloud computing fundamentally created the client advisory services area. Before cloud accounting, cloud bill payment, we did not have this line of service. And we, in many ways, helped create that acronym, CAS, client advisory services.

And this is now one of the top growth areas in the profession. And it’s also a very strategic area. And we are leveraging what we’ve learned from the development of the CAS area as we think about what AI is going to do.

A big takeaway is the firms that really succeeded in building out a client advisory services area are ones who rethought their business models and their talent strategies. And one thing that we state all the time — it’s kind of one of the underlying pillars of Digital CPA — is transformation is all about the people, the process, and the technology. So you need to think about all three of those to build success.

And you don’t just want to focus on what AI is going to be able to do for you. Clearly, that’s very, very important. But you really want to step back and look at, OK, what can AI do to help me continue to transform my client accounting services area, client advisory services area? What can it do for me in the tax area, or what can it do for me in the audit area?

There are huge opportunities across all areas of the practice. But clearly one area that is accelerating the impact related to AI is in the tax arena. There’s a tremendous number of new tax offerings to help automate the inputs into the tax return, and there are also a couple of entities building entirely new tax prep solutions. Some of those announcements will be made at ENGAGE next month.

Amato: Yes, you mentioned ENGAGE. That’s now coming up a few weeks from now, our recording in late May. You’ve touched on client advisory services. You mentioned audit. You also talked about tax transformation. Now, CPA.com hired Brandon Allfrey as senior director for tax transformation in March. What’s a little more detail about some of those tax transformation initiatives at CPA.com, and what are the goals of those initiatives?

Asgeirsson: Thanks for that question. And before I jump into talking about Brandon Allfrey, I want to talk a little bit about how we’ve been leaning into the tax area for the past 18 months.

When gen AI started to really gain steam, we took a step back. We looked at all of the different practice areas, and we determined one area, which was really ripe to leverage this opportunity, was tax research. When you look at tax research, it’s based on a defined data set of information — the tax laws, analysis related to those laws, and case law.

When you think about large language models, what they really deliver is digesting all of this data and answering complex questions quickly. So we went out and looked at the category, and we determined that we wanted to help firms accelerate here. We launched a program with our partner Blue J. It has been one of the fastest-adopting programs that we’ve ever done.

When we do these programs, the primary driver is to help firms think through that people and process element. We had a team in place doing that, but what we really wanted to do was to truly expand and lead in tax transformation, help lead in the tax advisory services area.

So we made one of our most important hires. We went out and looked for a new senior director of tax transformation for CPA.com. This position is charged with helping transform the tax area in a similar fashion to what we’ve done over the past decade with client advisory services.

I’m thrilled that we were able to recruit someone of Brandon Allfrey’s talent. Brandon was a tax partner and led many transformation initiatives at a top 50 firm, Squire. When he saw that we were posting this position, he came to us and said, “This is something that I’d be really, really passionate about doing for the profession.”

So what we’re going to be doing with Brandon is putting together many similar initiatives that we did over the past decade related to CAS. We’re going to build a tax transformation framework, do benchmarking surveys, form working groups, and really put together the playbook on how to build success. It’s going to be expanded beyond just tax research. Tax research is one area we’re leaning into heavily now, but we’re going to be looking at the entire tax practice.

Amato: That’s great. Obviously, tax content is very popular, ever-changing, fast-moving, so some exciting things coming for sure. A recent AICPA Town Hall segment focused on major upgrades to AI models. Can you explain what has changed and what that means for CPAs?

Asgeirsson: I think we all realize that things have dramatically changed over the past six months. It’s incredible where the models currently are.

For the first few years, we were moving from experimentation to leveraging these gen AI models in a material way. But since the start of this year, with the more recent models, you’re seeing huge changes in the ability to write code, analyze complex data sets, and integrate tools like Claude into the Microsoft Office suite.

I think that’s really brought it home for many people — how powerful these capabilities are. When you start looking at areas like tax, CAS, and audit, I’m seeing it firsthand. Solution providers are taking the power of these models and plugging them into their incredible data sets.

Many listeners are leveraging the latest models in PowerPoint, Word, or Excel. But what I can tell you is this model layer that’s going on top of traditional SaaS companies is going to offer game-changing, new capabilities related to being a better adviser in client advisory services, providing better business insights, being able to deliver better information through state-of-the-art dashboards, as well as building agentic workflows in the CAS area.

There are similar opportunities in tax and audit. I just came back from a major audit conference, and we announced with our partner Caseware, as part of our [Dynamic Audit Solution (DAS)] project, the addition of the Claude tool into the DAS platform, which is going to allow firms to build their own agents. That’s what we’re all talking about now, so the world has changed dramatically.

Amato: It is changing. You mentioned DAS, the Dynamic Audit Solution, changing there, changing in a lot of ways. Many firm leaders, especially at small firms, are excited about AI, they’re starting to embrace it, but they still need to know how they get into it. They’re not sure how to start, how to pick the right technology or strategies. For those smaller firms in particular, what advice would you give them?

Asgeirsson: At this point in the evolution of gen AI, these powerful AI models, for the small firms, they’ve got a great opportunity to leverage the solution providers, because those providers are incorporating these tools at a very fast rate, using things like MCP servers, all the things you’re using to connect to these AI models.

I would encourage them first to think about which business line they want to evolve, then look at the different solution providers. We’ve launched an AI center at cpa.com/ai where we have a toolkit for due diligence related to selecting a potential AI provider. We also have a number of use cases to help the firms think about some ways where it could work for them based on examples of how other firms are leveraging AI.

So firms need to be deliberate about their relationships and follow proper due diligence. It’s more important now than ever. And there are steps that you can take, and then I think they should focus on the development of their team and their business strategies.

Amato: What do you see as the biggest risks for firms with AI, and then also what are the biggest opportunities?

Asgeirsson: Well, people like to say this all the time, that obviously one of the biggest risks are not being open-minded and looking at ways on how this technology can help transform your business.

Many people are saying that accountants that use AI will replace the accountants that do not. That’s probably an accurate statement. It’s an accurate statement to these technology evolutions over the past 30 years.

The profession has leveraged technology to truly deliver higher-value services and also utilize technology to do it in a much more efficient way.

One thing, and just this is broadly, that I’ve been saying to firms is that the great opportunity is that it’s going to produce better outcomes. You’re going to be able to provide better outcomes in the accounting services area, much better outcomes in the tax area, as well as audit.

And I think that’s so important because there is this — I’m going to jump back and forth between risk and opportunity here. One risk is, oh my God, is my business going to be automated? What will happen to my core value prop? The core value prop is going to continue to increase because the firms are going to provide better tax outcomes.

The tax return is going to be fundamentally automated, but the firms are going to move to tax planning. They’re going to move to five-year projections, more life planning discussions with their clients that’s going to produce a lot more value. And at the most basic level, the firm business model is about outsourcing. Fifty percent-plus of individuals in America leverage a preparer. And that trend is going to continue. So the do-it-yourself market is plateaued. People want someone else to help them. And this is at the individual level with their complex financial needs, and it clearly is at the small business level.

So a little bit more on the risks. You do need to worry about data integrity, security, client confidentiality, how you’re governing these different models. So that is something that was important during the cloud computing era. It’s important now. But again, I think this is an exciting time. It’s an exciting time. There is going to be a lot discussed at ENGAGE and then as we lead up to Digital CPA at the end of the year. I mean, Digital CPA, which we’re having in California, maybe we’ll get some speakers from some of these top AI companies to join us. We’ll be in Southern California in San Diego.

Amato: Speaking of being in Pacific Time, Town Hall will be at ENGAGE June 8, the live Town Hall as part of the kickoff of the first day. When you think about Town Hall — you’re one of the co-founders, the creators of Town Hall — when you think back on its growth and now consistent success, what were your guiding principles as you prepared to deliver information to members in Town Hall?

Asgeirsson: Great question. I think our guiding principles have always been to provide the best available information that we have at the current time. And it started during the pandemic. And we were connected to a number of different agencies in the federal government. We were connected to a number of key solution providers in the firm community and small business community.

We had information on how to support your business client during such a critical time, and that information was always changing. But we provided the best available information. We gave our interpretation of it, and we provided our thinking and our analysis related to how the firms or members of business and industry could leverage this to run their practice and support their business.

And that has continued until today. Every two weeks, there’s always something going on, and we share with the community our best available information. We bring on some excellent subject matter experts. And one other thing that we’ve been trying to do in the Town Hall is not just to focus on the current moment, the current news cycle, but to focus on long-term strategies that can help firms and members in business and industry build success.

So when we put our segments together, we obviously think about, OK, what’s happening right in the moment and what technical guidance can we give if it’s related to tax or related to some accounting and auditing changes. But we also put segments together that are about people strategies and firm strategies and business strategies.

So it’s a balance of those two elements. But again, back to when we founded it, was based on us really connecting with the broader membership, giving them our best thinking. And then also we learn so much from them in these Town Halls because they’re live events. We get 500-plus questions. We have thousands of attendees fill out surveys for us. So that really keeps us on our toes and keeps us current with what they’re thinking about.

Amato: Do you ever go back and watch an old Town Hall broadcast and see how maybe you’ve evolved as one of the hosts?

Asgeirsson: I don’t know if I … Every now and then we hit milestones. We’ll reflect on the first one, which was early April of 2020. I did that with Mark Koziel, and Lisa Simpson was on a number of those initial Town Halls back in the spring of 2020.

So yeah, we do reminisce a little bit. And also what we’re continually trying to do is to improve our overall delivery of these events. If I look back to April of 2020, we didn’t have video. Maybe we didn’t have all the elements that we have in place today. So we’re trying to put on a high-quality news show for the profession.

We were doing those initial Town Halls from our home offices. We now do it from our New York studio, our Washington, DC, studio, or the Durham studio. So we’ve got a bigger support team. And as I said, it really keeps us current. And if you listen to the Town Halls, then you go to an event like ENGAGE or Digital CPA, I think you hear similar themes. And I think it makes ENGAGE and Digital CPA and other events that we put on that much better because every two weeks, we have to really share what’s happening with the broader membership.

Right now, we have regular listeners of around 40,000 — 35,000 to 40,000 people attend usually one Town Hall every other month, or some people attend every Town Hall, but we really have built a big audience.

Amato: Yeah, there has been some great growth with it. We mentioned ENGAGE. It’s coming up. Anything you want to say about ENGAGE? And then also, never too early to look ahead to Digital CPA that we’ve touched on already. That’s in December. Any sneak peeks for that?

Thanks, Erik. This has been a great conversation. I’ll let you close it out.

Asgeirsson: Yeah, this has been fantastic. And thanks for all you do with this JofA podcast and the leadership at theJournal of Accountancy. It’s just a very, very important vehicle of communication.

And I’m very excited about the return to print. Even though we have Digital CPA, we like to live in a digital world, I think there is something important about an analog document or just looking at something and being able to read it in a nondigital environment. So I’m looking forward to that launch.

But just talking a little bit about ENGAGE, there’s going to be a number of announcements about what’s going on in the tax area. We’ll be announcing some initial surveys and benchmarking reports that we’re going to be developing.

There also will be a lot of announcements related to client advisory services, the evolution of a lot of agentic capabilities with some of our key solution providers. And then we’ll also be talking a lot about the audit area and the state of DAS and the state of audit transformation.

And just jumping to Digital CPA, in six months, so much more is going to happen. It’s going to be a tremendous look back at 2026 and a look ahead at 2027. We’ll have some of the best technologists and firm leaders there in San Diego. It’s an incredible event to end the year, and it’s December 6th to the 9th. So we welcome people joining us in person, or if you want to join virtually, you can do that as well.

Amato: Again, thanks to Erik Asgeirsson for his time and insights. We will include links in the show notes to resources related to our conversation: Town Hall, ENGAGE, and also information about Digital CPA.

Erik mentioned the print edition of the June Journal of Accountancy. ENGAGE attendees can pick up one of those print copies in a little more than a week.

I’m Neil Amato with the JofA. Thanks for listening.