Will AI be a busy-season savior?

The accounting profession’s adoption of AI has intensified over the past year. Jason Marx, CEO of tax and accounting at Wolters Kluwer, has helped the profession manage and leverage new, disruptive technologies for the past two decades. At AICPA’s 2026 ENGAGE conference, he shared his thoughts on accounting firms’ struggles with adopting AI and how, ultimately, it will bring both small and large accountancy firms a higher volume of business opportunities.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Based on what you’ve seen with clients, how AI-ready is the profession?

I think there’s a continuum. In many other cycles we’ve seen this. There are leading edge firms that want all of it now, and they’re leaning in hard to the technology, and they’re the same ones that were first for the cloud, or the same ones that before were the first to digital, and then you have the tail end, which probably are going to wait to the very last moment…and then you have the big middle, and that middle is looking for the real ROI and the use cases to understand how the workflows will allow them to create more value.

What I’m seeing now is faster adoption. In the early days of the cloud there was a lot of skepticism. You’re not seeing that in the same way now. I think people have accepted these models and accepted the capabilities, and now what they’re probably struggling with more is how to really get the maximum value out of it. The technology is no longer the obstacle…it’s adoption, which is really about firms’ readiness.

What are firms doing with the time that they’re saving?

If I were to generalize what I’m hearing, most of them are looking at an opportunity for capacity, meaning they can do more, because the staffing crisis is still real.

An easier busy season has long been the dream of the profession. Can AI help?

Absolutely. We’re already seeing firms, in all seriousness, that can do more in the same amount of time. That bottleneck and the window has never gotten wider, it’s only gotten narrower with the regulation, the compliance, and all of the changes that happened this year. We saw firms, like apples to apples, that did more with the same staff because they were able to take advantage of these capabilities. You’re seeing very small firms do high volumes, and you’re seeing large firms continue to expand their volume.

Are you seeing accountants having to develop more or different skills to work with AI, or is AI kind of intuitive?

If done well in the workflows, it should be intuitive. If you have to stop and think about it all that long, it isn’t intuitive enough…I think this is where sort of the younger generation coming in has a leg up. They are digital natives, they’re coming out of school or grad school or whatever, with these skill sets…I was talking to one, let’s just say top 40 firm. They’re growing their entry level base. Why? Because they want more of that skill set. They have to train them on the industry. They do not have to train them on the technology.

What roadblocks do you see clients or accounting firms facing when they’re adopting AI?

The first that I think is really important is the ways of working in the firm. The technology has been democratized to the point where it’s accessible. What the firms are still working through is how do they organize the work within the firm? How do they structure?

Ultimately, they’re going to have to think about how they price. A lot of the profession still focuses on time-based billing. Well, when time has shrunk to seconds, value becomes really important. Even today I was talking to a few firms, they are thinking about how do they move and defend their value to their clients…I think ultimately it starts to become outcome-driven rather than time driven.