Business belief in the impact of artificial intelligence is growing rapidly, according to the second annual survey of professionals by Thomson Reuters in its Future of Professionals report.

The survey of 22,000 respondents found 77 percent will have a high or transformational impact on their careers, up from 67 percent in the first study.

Thomson’s report takes consistently optimistic tone about the Impact of AI and at one point noted, “there seemed to be a general ebbing of the initial fears around AI, especially around job loss and the technology’s potential for malicious use.”

Overall, 78 percent of respondents believe AI is a force for good in their profession. Within the tax and accounting and global trading segment, 84 percent see the impact of AI positive. The average was pulled down by the 72 percent of legal professionals who held the same view

North American respondents had the lowest rate of optimism, but still 74 percent had a positive view of AI. The high rate was from the 94 percent of Latin American respondents who voice that opinion.

New GenAI capabilities have been introduced for customer support in Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting’s virtual agent.

The enhancements will be introduced first in the United States, one of 10 countries in which the AI tool is available. The company said the agent speaks six languages and is integrated in 29 tax and accounting products

WK says the new AI functionality offers instant access to relevant internal information and administrative task assistance and can integrate with other workplace tools. The company notes it has upcoming AI enhancements for CCH Axcess, CCH iQ, Twinfield, CCH ProSystem fx and Xpitax Outsourcing.

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 Xero says its AI bot, Just Ask Xero, will enter beta testing in August. 

The software company, which previewed the business companion in February, describes JAX as ensuring the data fed to its Large Language Model, is used only for relevant tasks, such as quoting invoices.

Xero is offering companies the opportunity to show their interest in participating in the beta.

In addition, Xero introduced embedded generative AI-powered help content summaries inside the Xero platform; launched generated answers in Xero Central, its customer support and learning site, and rolled out ab AI-powered setup guide for those onboarding to Xero.

 Zoho has introduced a new CRM package that the software publisher says can be used more broadly at client companies. The company describes Zoho for Everyone as software that can be used to draw together client teams.

Vibhav Vankayala, (Vibhav VS), head of product marketing, says the concept is built around sales orders.  “The order is the single source of truth from start to the finish” says Vibhav VS, adding  the product is also about democratizing CRM,

The Zoho press release said Everyone allows sales teams communicate and coordinate with other teams from a single place. 

Each team, Vibhav VS said, needs its own space with Teams modules used to create these spaces. This can be accomplished via use of templates, such as expense tracking, legal contract management and customer onboarding or through custom creation. 

Teams utilize Requesters to ask for a deliverable or contribution from a  different team, and have to ability track the status of  requests .The Zero announcement said, “These capabilities stand to improve visibility for every stakeholder in the customer journey, mitigate gaps in coordination, reduce turnaround time, and improve the quality of the customer experience.”

 It is impossible to escape the phrases AI and generative AI. So what does artificial intelligence and genAI mean for providing payroll service>. Is genAI something for processing payroll today or is it something for the future, changes that will come to improve the system? Or is it a little bit of both? Payroll Meets AI takes a look at what providers are offering the market and what will come.

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There seemed only one choice in discussing major trends among Mid-Market resellers—the impact of artificial intelligence. At times, it seems the only topic in technology and the Special Report, The Mid-Market Faces the AI Revolution, covers the trend impacting VARs. But there is more than AI going on as private equity investments have an increasing impact in the reselling and accounting firm space. Of course, there is the selection of Bob Scott’s Top 100 VARs itself and this year’s list honors a lot of family names, but also reflects the changing nature of the list.

 The pace of technology does not slow down...

If we thought that it would take a breather after the end of the Covid pandemic and the advent of the remote work era, the impact of trends such as artificial intelligence and on-demand pay proved us wrong. If anything, automation promises to keep changes in payroll moving at a fast clip. That should translate into making it easier to calculate and run payroll and have greater accuracy in producing the end result—paying people for their work. This special report—Payroll Big Changes Ahead—looks at the trends impacting this crucial business.   

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To say the broad economic picture is confusing when applied to mid-market reselling would be an understatement.

Many observers expect a recession and some report sales cycles stretching out. Meanwhile, the immediate problem for many firms is a shortage of consultants to handle all the cloud implementations—a recession might send more businesses scrambling for SaaS financial software for more efficient operations. In a world reshaped by the Covid shutdown, remote work drove an accelerated interest in cloud computing. It's a new world in which how the forces interplay is yet to be fully understood.

This year's Special Report for Bob Scott's Top 100 VARs, "A Tougher Road Ahead?" looks at the thoughts of leaders in the channel and in the vendor community about these issues and the trends that have impacted ERP mid-market resellers over the last year. Of course, this report also features 100 reselling firms that have been chosen based on revenue. This year's list includes more than the usual number of newcomers and the expectation is, next year will reflect the continue rapid pace of change in technology and layers.

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Steven Brewer, CPA is the President of Steven Brewer and Company, CPAs, located in Salem, IN. He talked to AccountantsWorld about how he’s grown his accounting practice without needing to increase his number of clients – and how those improvements have eased his tax season crunch.

BooXkeeping: How White Label Bookkeeping Services Provide Scalability to Your Firm When it comes to running a business the main thing that every business owner wants to do is sell their products or services, create brand awareness and generate profits that they can enjoy later in life. The last thing a business owner wants to do is to worry about bookkeeping, taxes, and the rest of time consuming accounting tasks needed to run a successful business, with limited resources and time, often the bookkeeping ends up being the last on the list of things that need to be completed.

 The Internal Revenue Services has issued new features for online and digital products, including several enhancements to Individual Online Accounts.

Those with accounts can now retrieve all their tax related information, including Wage & Income Account, Record of Account and Return transcripts and Request an update to their Identity Protection PINs via smartphones and tablets.

In addition, they can view information about the status of audits, use a Lien Payoff Calculator to access lien information, calculate their lien payoff amount and generate a letter for downloading or printing and complete the Pending Installment Agreement process within Online Accounts.

They can also have a comprehensive overview of account information, including the status of their tax refunds whiles these are processed.

Moreover, Business Tax Accounts are now available in Spanish with taxpayers also able to see their balances due and make the payment while proprietors can now download business entity transcripts from their Business Tax Accounts.

The IRS additionally has added more amended returns to its electronic filing system. These include Forms 940, 941, 943 and 945, along with the Spanish version of Forms 941 and 943.

Bloomberg Tax & Accounting has added an AI formula generator to Bloomberg Tax Workpapers. The company also added more integrations with Bloomberg Tax’s Fixed Assets and Tax Provision packages.

The AI Expression Generator enables Workpapers users to provide requirements in natural language and receive an AI-generated formula output. 

In its announcement, Bloomberg said, “This tool leverages AI automation to address common challenges in the review and maintenance of workpapers, such as mitigating the risk of manual formula errors or uncertainty around which function to use to accomplish a data transformation task.”

In addition, the company noted its direct data export feature to Bloomberg Tax Provision can be used to bring in. data from other applications.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued updated regulations regarding required minimum distributions from retirement plans, retaining a requirement about beneficiary distributions.

The IRS had reviewed comments that annual RMDs to beneficiaries should be required to continue if the remaining balance is full distributed within 10 years of an individual’s death.

However, the agency decided to retain the requirement a beneficiary should continue receiving annual payments.

Intuit is now bundling its tax planning software with its online tax system. The company said this month ProConnect Tax now includes Intuit Tax Advisor.

The tax planner is also available with its on-premise Lacerte sotware

Tax Advisor is offered as an optional service through December 31. Starting in 2025, Intuit is requiring Fast Path for each Lacerte user or User Access for each ProConnect Tax Online user who is required to create and prepare Intuit Tax Advisor plans. 

Fast Path subscriptions are necessary to provide network access, e-filing capabilities and bank downloads.

Sikich has promoted two of its employees to newly created executive positions. The firm named Cameron Petroff as chief marketing officer and Kelli Schweder has been promoted to chief of staff.   

The CPA firm said the moves follow the May minority investment from Bain Capital of $250 million and are designed to support growth

Petroff, who was previously senior managing director joined Sikich in November 2017. Before that, he was marketing director for BDO USA from July 2015 through November 2017. Earlier, he spent 10 years four months in marketing positions with Deloitte where he was national marketing from June 2011 through July 2015

Schweder came to Sikich in October 2007, working in. marketing positions until 2015, when she became senior manager administration. She has been director of corporate strategic projects from September 2019 until her promotion.

Tom Mescal, a partner who held leadership positions at CPA firm  Armanino, has retired from the from after more than 20 years.

Mescal posted on LinkedIn that he is serving as active investor in AI, cybersecurity and enterprise software while enjoying leisure activities.

Mescal served as partner-in-charge of consulting at the San Ramon, Calif.-based accounting firm from May 2004 through November 2021. He then became chief growth officer, charged with partner growth and innovation, serving in that position until his departure.

Bill has created the role of chief customer officer, placing its chief marketing officer, Sarah Acton, in the job. 

 Acton, who joined the payments software company in November 2021, will lead go-to-market functions, including sales and marketing. 

Acton was previously VP of sales and marketing for wearables company, Athos, from April 2017 through April 2021. She spent four years, four months, at LinkedIn, serving as senor director of brand marketing, in her last two years two months there.

Dark Horse CPAs has promoted Justin Kürn to the position of chief revenue officer. Kürn, who has been with the firm since August 2021, was previously VP of development.

The firm cited him as having “been instrumental in driving the sales and marketing initiatives at Dark Horse CPAs for the past four years as well as recruiting and developing talent for the accelerator program and onboarding firms on to the Dark Horse platform.

In his new role, he will lead the tax, client accounting services, marketing and sales teams.

Kürn worked at the Friedman Learning Group from August 2016, until joining Dark Horse. From January 2019 on, he was director of sales operations for the group.

Avalara has established a online portal of a key part of its new partner program. 

The indirect tax company say the Avalara Partner Portal, provides access to such services as technical support, sales and marketing resources and the engagement desk. 

In its statement, Avalara said, “Partners have access to a richer portfolio of financial incentives that allow them to reach their full potential when bringing opportunities to Avalara.” Other incentives include co-marketing and training.

The company’s channel is comprised by accountants, consulting partners, and technology partners who participate through three primary methods: referring, expanding services and building integration

States are reducing transaction thresholds for tax online goods and services, according to Avalara Tax Changes 2024 special report. 

Driven by the volume of inexpensive goods that could be taxed, the change is likely to be assisted by the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Governing Board which is encouraging members to elimination transaction thresholds.

“The SST states are the majority of states that have a transaction threshold,” Scott Peterson, Avalara’s VP of government relations, and former Executive Director of SST, said in a prepared statement. “If they get rid of it then very few states will have it.” 

Peterson notes that since the Wayfair decision from the U.S. Supreme Court gave states the right to tax online sales from companies outside their borders, states have realized there are many very inexpensive products which produce an amount of tax less than the cost of compliance.

Fourteen states—largely south and southwestern—never imposed thresholds: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

Another ten estates—heavily northern—have reduced thresholds California, Colorado, lowa, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin

Thomson Reuters has acquired 60 percent of the shares of Pagero, a Swedish company that markets software for the e-invoicing, which is increasingly required by countries around the world. The growing importance of e-invoicing was underscored by a press released from Avalara, which withdrew its bid for Pagero last week.

“E-invoicing is the clear direction for the future of compliance. It’s important to remember that countries that don’t have mandatory e-invoicing requirements now will have them in the future,”  Alex Baulf, VP of E-Invoicing at Avalara, said in a prepared statement . 

Thomson beat out two rivals in the indirect tax software space, Vertex and Avalara. 

 The value of Thomson’s purchase of 53.8 percent of the Pagero has been estimated at $627 million. However, since it won the bid, the stake has been raised to 60 percent of Pagero shares, Thomson CEO Steve Hasker said ina recent investor webcast.

Thomson noted that more than 80 countries have required or announced plans for e-invoicing, which gives governments greater insight into the amount of revenue and indirect taxes generated by sales.

 Avalara says it is improving data import for Avalara Returns for Accountants and Avalara Managed Returns for Accountants. The indirect tax software company says this is being accomplished via five new API extractors.

"The goal of the extractors is to create a more streamlined and efficient way for firms to import data into the Returns console," the company said in a prepared statement.

These capabilities were announced simultaneously with additional integrations of its products with ERP systems.

Avalara is providing its ninth integration for the Salesforce Service Cloud, which will enable sales tax calculation on service- and product-related line items within the Service Cloud and gives customers the ability to easily map custom fields from Salesforce to Avalara AvaTax.

In addition, Avalara E-Invoicing and Live Reporting are now available for Oracle Cloud Fusion ERP. ELR was introduced this year to enable companies operating in other countries to simplify compliance in these areas.