The integration of digital technology with tax-related professional services is accelerating, marked by a significant event held at Xizhi Tower on July 18. The "Embracing the Future with Intelligent AI & AI-Empowered Tax Professional Services" launch conference, hosted by the Shanghai Certified Tax Agents Association, brought together representatives from nearly a hundred tax advisory firms in the city. The gathering focused on exploring the application of artificial intelligence technology and discussing pathways for transformation and new developmental opportunities for the tax services sector amid the digital wave.
At the event, PwC unveiled its comprehensive "AI Tax+" solution suite, featuring live demonstrations of three intelligent tools. These tools are designed to address longstanding industry pain points such as low efficiency, cumbersome processes, and difficult risk control in traditional tax services. By offering full-process, high-efficiency, and intelligent advantages, they present a new paradigm for the digital upgrade of tax services.
The three intelligent tools each target specific areas to empower the industry across all scenarios. The Tax Risk Intelligent Control Platform establishes a full-cycle risk management system covering pre-warning, in-process monitoring, and post-assessment, enabling dynamic and systematic tax risk control. The Transfer Pricing Simulation Assistant, leveraging natural language interaction, can complete the entire workflow from data calculation to report generation with a single instruction, compressing tasks that previously took hours down to minutes and significantly boosting work efficiency. The Overseas Compliance Assistant intelligently aggregates financial data from multiple countries, automatically translates multilingual tax documents, and generates compliant filing materials with one click, efficiently meeting the demands of cross-border tax operations.
Lin Rong, PwC China Tax Technology and Innovation Lead Partner, emphasized at the conference that artificial intelligence is not a replacement for the tax industry but an enabler for its upgrade and a re-shaper of service value. AI can comprehensively handle repetitive basic tasks such as accounting, retrieval, and form-filling, freeing tax professionals from mechanical and tedious work. This allows them to focus their expertise on high-value areas like risk analysis, professional judgment, and strategic insight, thereby reconstructing the core value of tax-related services.
Industry research data underscores the immense potential of AI in empowering the tax field. According to PwC's 2026 Global CEO Survey, which covered over 4,000 business leaders across 95 countries, the tax function, alongside finance and information technology, stands as a core area where AI can drive cost reduction and efficiency gains. The survey indicates that leveraging AI could achieve long-term cost savings of 50% to 60% for tax functions.
Currently, digital transformation within the industry is an irreversible trend. With the full implementation of the Golden Tax Phase IV system's "governing tax by data" approach, the digitization and intelligence of tax collection and administration are continuously deepening. This shift is compelling traditional tax services to move away from outdated models reliant on manual worksheets and calculations, evolving towards digital collaboration and intelligent service delivery. Simultaneously, the ongoing updates to cross-border tax rules and increasingly stringent compliance regulations make traditional manual retrieval and processing methods inadequate for complex and ever-changing tax scenarios. The maturation and application of technologies like large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, and intelligent agents are making the large-scale, automated delivery of professional tax services a reality, driving the industry's transition from basic filing agency work towards higher value-added services such as tax planning, compliance verification, and customized consulting.
The launch conference provided a tangible sense of these industry transformation trends for attendees. Participating tax agents noted that traditional tax services heavily depend on human resources and manual worksheet accumulation, with competition often centered on workforce size. The proliferation of AI, however, is shifting the industry's new core competitive advantages towards computing power, intelligent tools, and professional expertise. With AI efficiently handling basic, repetitive, and mechanical tax tasks, tax practitioners can now delve deeper into high-end services such as client communication, complex tax planning, and personalized compliance consulting. This evolution is poised to enhance the quality and efficiency of the tax industry, injecting it with renewed vitality.
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