More than half of corporate tax departments have dual tax/technology roles, according to a recent report; and with many tax professionals anticipating more change, now is the time to learn tech skills
Many of today’s corporate tax departments are stuck in a resourcing struggle. More than half (51%) of tax department leaders surveyed said they believe their departments are under-resourced, which leaves them more at risk for tax audits and penalties, according to a recent corporate tax report. This lack of resources also extends to departments’ attempts at innovation, as nearly half (49%) of leaders said they believe they do not have adequate resources to improve technology and automation, the report also noted.
With this in mind, it’s no surprise that many corporate tax professionals believe their departments are behind the curve of technological innovation. The recently released 2025 Corporate Tax Technology Report from the Thomson Reuters Institute and Tax Executives Institute finds that more than half (57%) of corporate tax professionals rate their department’s technology maturity as chaotic or reactive. Just 6%, meanwhile, call their department’s tech position optimized or predictive.
So, with few resources to devote to technology, how are today’s tax departments looking to keep up with innovation? The answer comes with dual tax/technology roles — and it’s a skill set that tax professionals may need to adopt sooner rather than later.
The tax technologist
According to the 2025 Corporate Tax Technology Report, tax departments are undertaking a wide variety of strategies around hiring technology resources. Some (17%) survey respondents said their departments are outsourcing technology services entirely, while slightly fewer (15%) reported their departments had hired technology consultants within the past year.
But far and away, the most common strategy for tax departments is to try and tackle innovation through in-house resources. “It is going to become more and more necessary, as new laws and initiatives role out (ex: Pillar 2),” said one survey respondent. “Businesses may not want to spend on new technology but will need to if they don’t want to outsource the work. I believe if the department has the capability to do the work in-house, getting functioning software is the best option, instead of outsourcing it completely.”
In practice, that has meant having personnel with dual roles — those who conduct tax work but are also in charge of innovation.
The preponderance of these sorts of roles is not particularly surprising. Given the resource limitations at many corporate tax departments — and especially smaller departments — it is still rare to see dedicated IT job functions solely within the tax department. Given the unique nature of tax work, however, less than one-third (28%) of respondents said their department primarily relies on shared IT job functions for technology personnel resourcing.
Today’s tax department wants somebody who can do both. Sometimes, that means finding a tax professional who is drawn to the technology, then empowering them to lead innovation. “I’m happy to be part of transforming tax department functions,” said one respondent to the report. “I started by learning processes and improving them over time with technology, and now I lead a team with a focus on how we can use technology to be more efficient and re-use data in multiple processes.”
Increasingly, however, many tax departments are taking the opposite approach: hiring a technologist and teaching them tax rules. In fact, of respondents who said their department had hired a technology professional solely for the tax department, 57% said the hire had come with a primarily technology background, 24% came from a tax background, and the remaining 19% were from another background or unknown.
For these departments, the goal is to be able to teach a technologist what can be automated, and what should stay the purview of the tax professional. “Technology will transform the tax department,” said one respondent. “There will be a bigger shift to all staff being even more analytical compared to their abilities now. The technology will do all the nonanalytical work.”
The future of tax/tech jobs
The fact that more than half of tax departments now rely on dual tax/technology roles may be a surprise to those used to a more reserved department posture — but corporate tax professionals say they believe this may only be the beginning.
In line with current resourcing trends, fewer than half of all respondents said they believe their departments will have new job roles due to technology within the next 3 to 5 years. Notably, however, the total that do expect new job roles has risen seven percentage points in the past year alone — to 39% in 2025 from 32% in 2024.
Even greater is the proportion who said they believe technology will change current job roles within the next 3 to 5 years, which now stands at more than half of respondents (55%), compared to just 41% who said they anticipated role changes in 2024.
Already, some departments are hoping that infusing technology into tax work will help close the resource gap. One survey respondent said they were “hopeful that it will bring efficiency and better ROI [return on investment]. It is difficult to find good employees in accounting and tax, and leveraging AI and tech will bridge that gap.”
For tax professionals themselves, however, there is also a lesson: The time to begin acquiring technology skills is now. Especially with so many tax department leaders moving towards dual tax/tech roles — and with more likely on the way — training on technology can be a surefire way to make a resume more attractive. Those who become fluent in new technologies such as generative AI (GenAI) will automatically stand out in a market desperate for tax workers already, let alone those who can conduct work more efficiently and skillfully.
And those who don’t adapt to this new tax technology paradigm may slowly start to be left behind. “A lot of our lower-level positions will be replaced by technology,” one survey respondent said. “The people holding those positions seem to be ignoring that reality. It will pose significant challenges in developing talent to fill senior positions.”
You can download a full copy of the 2025 Corporate Tax Technology Report here
