AI for accountants and tax firms.
Written by someone who implements this inside regulated firms, not by a vendor selling seats or a content farm that has never filed a return.
Nothing prohibits a CPA from using AI, and the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility addressed it directly in OPR Alert 2026-19. What changes is what you have to be able to show. Circular 230 section 10.22 due diligence cannot be delegated to software, the AICPA Confidential Client Information Rule still governs what leaves the firm, and IRC section 7216 governs return information the moment it reaches a third party — as a criminal statute, not a guideline.
The gap this fills.
Search any of these questions and you get a vendor page that answers in whichever direction sells the product, an affiliate review site that has never run the software, or a summary that stops at the point your problem begins.
The consent question is the clearest example. Search for a section 7216 consent form for an AI vendor and one of the pages that ranks tells you plainly that no vendor publishes a valid one and that most templates circulating in practitioner forums omit the mandatory language, which makes them invalid. Nobody then publishes the language. It is four paragraphs and it is public.
Five places to go.
The section 7216 consent
The mandatory language from Rev. Proc. 2013-14, quoted from the IRS text rather than from a summary, plus the requirements that quietly invalidate a form. An engagement letter clause is not a consent, and the two disclosure paths differ on whether you may insist.
Extension season
The profession's second busy season, which almost nothing is written about. What is worth pointing a tool at with weeks left, what is not, and why most of what a vendor would sell you should wait until May.
Will AI replace accountants?
No, and the reason is that section 10.22 due diligence and the preparer penalties attach to a person. The longer answer is about the roles that are exposed, and about what happens to training when the first draft arrives finished.
What the AICPA has actually published
A Small Firm Generative AI Policy Template and guidance for federal tax practice. What does not exist is an AI ethics interpretation comparable to ABA Formal Opinion 512, and the Code applies as written regardless.
If you do nothing else.
Work out, in writing, which tools in your firm have touched return information and under what consent. Most firms cannot answer that, and section 7216 is the one rule in this area that carries a custodial sentence rather than a fine.
A misdemeanor, up to one year, or a fine of up to $1,000, or both, plus the costs of prosecution. Section 6713 adds $250 per disclosure on top, to a $10,000 annual cap. That list takes an afternoon and settles what everything else depends on.
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On the regulatory material.
Every rule is named so you can check it or hand it to counsel. Last reviewed at source: September 2026. The consent language on the consent page was transcribed from the IRS publication of Rev. Proc. 2013-14 rather than from a secondary summary, because the summaries are the reason invalid forms are circulating.
This is not legal advice, and section 7216 in particular carries criminal penalties. It is how a practitioner who builds these systems reads the rules.
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