# AI in Accounting Statistics for 2026

> 88% of accountants surveyed have used AI on client work, but 14% of tax firm respondents run AI agents and 19% measure what their AI tools return.

By Vlad Shvets, Partner @ Qvery · Published 2026-11-02 · Updated 2026-11-02 · 13 min read
Canonical: https://qvery.ai/blog/ai-in-accounting-statistics/

Much of what an accounting or tax firm bills for is work that looks the same every year: collecting each client's documents, keying them into the tax or accounting software, researching the positions, and checking it all before someone signs. The people who do it are hard to hire, and the software vendors calling your firm say AI now does that work.

The profession's own 2026 surveys, read by who answered and what they were asked, show how far that has gone.

**Nearly every accountant has used AI, few firms have handed it a whole job, and fewer still have counted what it gives back.** The hours saved and the move away from hourly billing are, so far, mostly what people expect.

Below are the numbers with their scope, and how we take one document-heavy job off a firm with an AI agent that runs on its own and is counted in hours saved and errors avoided.

One caution before the numbers: companies that sell software to accountants ran or paid for most of these surveys, so each figure carries its publisher's name.

> 📌 **Highlights** 
> - **88% of US accountants and bookkeepers surveyed used AI for at least one client service** in the past year, and 30% say it is the default in their daily work.[^1]
> - **14% of tax firm respondents say their firm already uses AI agents**, against 34% that use generative AI.[^2]
> - **The best of 145 AI systems answered 80.38% of 1,223 hard tax questions correctly** on an independent benchmark.[^3]
> - **19% of tax firm respondents say their firm measures the return on its AI tools.**[^2]
> - **78% of tax and accounting firm respondents still bill mainly by the hour**,[^4] while 69% of US tax professionals in another survey expect to move to fixed, value-based or hybrid fees.[^5]

## 88% of Accountants Have Used AI on Client Work, and 30% Use It by Default

Intuit, which makes QuickBooks, surveyed 725 US accounting and bookkeeping professionals in May 2026. **88% had used AI for at least one client service in the past 12 months**, and 86% for at least one task of running the firm, such as invoicing.[^1]

Only **30% say AI is the default in their day-to-day work**; the largest group, 54%, reaches for it when a task seems to call for it.[^1]

**Surveys that ask a narrower question get lower numbers.** In ACCA's 2026 survey of 11,389 accountancy and finance professionals in 160 countries, **52% use AI tools regularly in their roles**.[^6]

The Thomson Reuters Institute, part of a company that sells AI tools, asked in late 2025 about the organization rather than the person.

**34% of tax firm respondents say their firm already uses generative AI**,[^2] and **14% say it uses AI agents**, software that handles a task the way a trained employee would, with little supervision.[^2] 13% say generative AI is already central to their workflow.[^2]

**Tax Firms: 34% Use Generative AI, 14% Use AI Agents** (share of tax firm respondents)

34% of tax firm respondents say their firm already uses generative AI, 14% say it already uses AI agents, and 13% say generative AI is already central to their workflow.

| Label | Value |
|---|---:|
| Already use generative AI | 34% |
| Already use AI agents | 14% |
| Generative AI already central to their workflow | 13% |

Tax firm respondents in the Thomson Reuters Institute's survey of 1,514 professionals in 27 countries, October and November 2025, answering for their organization. Each bar is a separate question. Source: Thomson Reuters Institute: 2026 AI in Professional Services Report (2026)

88% and 14% answer different questions. The first counts people who used AI for at least one client service in a year, so a preparer who once asked a chat window to explain an IRS notice is in it. The second counts firms that run AI agents. The second is the number to set your firm against.

## Tax Research Comes First, and Weekly Use of It Nearly Doubled in a Year

Blue J, which sells an AI tax research product, and CPA.com, the AICPA's technology affiliate, surveyed more than 1,000 US tax professionals for a report released in June 2026. **60% use AI for tax research at least weekly, up from 33% a year earlier.**[^5]

Research also leads in Thomson Reuters' survey. Among tax and accounting professionals whose organizations use generative AI, **69% use it for tax research**, 57% to summarize documents and 55% to review them; bookkeeping, tax advice and return preparation follow at 53% each.[^2]

**Tax Research Leads What Tax and Accounting Teams Use AI For** (share of generative AI users)

Among tax and accounting professionals whose organizations use generative AI, 69% use it for tax research, 57% to summarize documents, 55% to review documents, and 53% each for bookkeeping, tax advice and return preparation.

| Label | Value |
|---|---:|
| Tax research | 69% |
| Document summarization | 57% |
| Document review | 55% |
| Accounting and bookkeeping | 53% |
| Tax advisory | 53% |
| Tax return preparation | 53% |

Share of current generative AI users in the tax and accounting segment of the Thomson Reuters Institute's survey (October and November 2025) who use it for each task. Several answers allowed. Source: Thomson Reuters Institute: 2026 AI in Professional Services Report (2026)

Research and summaries have one thing in common: a person reads the answer before anything happens with it. A chat window helps there, and the work stays on the desk of whoever asked.

The hours that pile up in tax season sit somewhere else.

Intuit's respondents report **losing about 5 hours a week moving, re-entering or reconciling information** across the average firm's 10 apps,[^1] and data entry and processing is the top client-service use of AI in the same survey, at 54%.[^1]

**Moving documents and figures between systems is the work an agent can take whole**, because the check at the end of it is mechanical.

## The Best AI Still Gets One Hard Tax Question in Five Wrong

Vals AI, which tests AI models on professional tasks, keeps a private set of 1,223 hard tax questions written and double-checked with tax and finance experts. **The best of 145 systems it tested answered 80.38% correctly**, and the systems ranked 2 to 40 scored between 74.20% and 79.72%.[^3]

The questions models miss most need multi-step calculations, a judgment about which rules and numbers apply, or more recent data than the model has.[^3]

Your clients' finance teams have met the same thing. In a survey Wakefield Research ran for Maximor, a company that sells AI finance software, **86% of 100 finance chiefs at US companies with $50 million to $500 million in revenue said their team had met at least one wrong or made-up figure from AI**,[^7] and 14% fully trust AI to produce accurate accounting data on its own.[^8]

The two numbers get quoted together, and they count different things.

![Left: 86% of 100 finance chiefs say their team met a wrong AI figure at least once. Right: the best AI system got 80.38% of 1,223 hard tax questions right.](https://qvery.ai/blog/ai-in-accounting-statistics/illustration-two-counts.webp)

*Read what each number counts before you compare them.*

A person's review is what stands between a wrong answer and a client, and the rules say where it sits. The IRS Office of Professional Responsibility told tax practitioners in June 2026 that due diligence means **verifying the facts, citations and calculations AI produces**.[^9]

Accountants want it that way too: **only 6% of Intuit's respondents want AI to carry out client work on its own**, while 34% want it to draft with a person reviewing and signing off.[^1]

So every AI answer in a firm comes with a check, and any time figure is worth what is left after it.

## Most Accountants Say AI Saves Time, and One Study Has Measured It

**84% of the tax professionals in Blue J's survey agree that AI saves time**,[^5] and three in four AI users in Intuit's say it delivered more value than they expected.[^1] Both are opinions about the work.

The measurement comes from a Stanford Graduate School of Business working paper by Jung Ho Choi and Chloe Xie.

Working with a company that sells AI accounting software, they studied field data from 79 firms using its product, covering hundreds of thousands of transactions. **Accountants who used the AI supported 55% more clients a week, moved about 8.5% of their time from data entry to business communication and quality checks, and closed the month 7.5 days sooner.**[^10]

The work the AI took over was repetitive, such as classifying transactions, and junior staff were more likely to accept its output even when it was flagged as uncertain.[^11] It is a working paper on one product, comparing adopters with accountants who worked the old way, so read it as the best measurement there is, not as the saving your firm will get.

Few firms count their own. **19% of tax firm respondents in Thomson Reuters' survey say their firm measures the return on its AI tools; 54% say it does not, and 27% don't know.**[^2] Across all the professions surveyed, the organizations that measure mostly count internal cost savings (77%) and how many employees use the tools (64%).[^2]

**19% of Tax Firms Measure the Return on Their AI Tools** (share of tax firm respondents)

19% of tax firm respondents say their firm measures the return on its AI tools, 54% say it does not, and 27% don't know.

| Label | Value |
|---|---:|
| Yes | 19% |
| No | 54% |
| Don't know | 27% |

Tax firm respondents in the Thomson Reuters Institute's survey (October and November 2025), asked: is your organization measuring the ROI of AI tools? Source: Thomson Reuters Institute: 2026 AI in Professional Services Report (2026)

Practitioners describe the same split from their desks: the hours come back where AI does the routine and a person checks it, and they don't where fixing its output takes as long as doing the work.

**What Reddit says**

> 10 hour research project before. Cut to like an 1-2 hours of me doing quality control of the output and checking citations.
> ([r/Accounting · Jun 2026](https://reddit.com/r/Accounting/comments/1ttzq8z/anybody_actually_feel_significantly_impacted_by/op8kiio/))

> But its competency level is still that of a decent trainee accountant. It still requires revision and oversight.
> ([r/Accounting · Jun 2026](https://reddit.com/r/Accounting/comments/1ttzq8z/anybody_actually_feel_significantly_impacted_by/op674tp/))

> But we spent as much time fixing the inputs as it would have taken to manually input.
> ([r/taxpros · Jun 2026](https://reddit.com/r/taxpros/comments/1uajzbi/anyone_actually_using_an_ai_agent_for_lacerte/osotzhj/))

## Most Firms Still Bill by the Hour While Expecting Not To

In the Thomson Reuters Institute's 2026 survey of 600 people at tax, audit and accounting firms, **78% say their firm still bills mainly by the hour**.[^4] In Blue J's survey, **69% of US tax professionals expect to move to value-based, hybrid or fixed fees**.[^5]

The samples differ, so the two figures are not a before and after. Together they say the change is expected more than it is done, which is how the AICPA's 2025 benchmarking survey of 1,073 CPA firms put it too: "a slow but steady increase in value and fixed pricing."[^12]

Clients and the IRS now push the same way.

Corporate tax departments want their firms to use AI: **74% of corporate tax respondents in Thomson Reuters' survey say their outside firms should**, and 60% don't know whether they do.[^2]

The IRS guidance of June 2026 warns that billing for time that was not spent on AI-assisted work may break the rules practitioners answer to, adding that "cost savings should be passed on openly."[^9]

On an hourly invoice, every hour AI takes off a return comes off the bill. A fixed fee per engagement leaves the firm to decide where the saving goes, which is the case for [putting returns on a fixed fee](https://qvery.ai/blog/accounting-firm-pricing-ai/).

## The Hours Matter Because Firms Still Struggle to Hire

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts **1,595,200 accountant and auditor jobs in 2025** and projects about **115,300 openings a year** through 2035, with employment growing 5%, faster than the average occupation.[^13] Fewer graduates are coming through: US accounting graduates fell 6.6% to 55,152 in the 2023-24 school year, though enrollment rose 12% in both semesters of 2024-25.[^14]

Firms feel it. 77% of Intuit's respondents had at least one hiring struggle in the past year, and 56% say a new entry-level hire would take six months or more to become fully productive.[^1] **40% of the firm respondents in Thomson Reuters' 2026 survey say talent issues constrain their firm's capabilities or put them at risk.**[^4]

**Hiring Struggles Are Easing, and 77% Still Report One** (share reporting a hiring struggle)

The share reporting at least one hiring struggle fell from 94% in 2024 to 80% in 2025 and 77% in 2026.

| Label | Value |
|---|---:|
| 2024 | 94% |
| 2025 | 80% |
| 2026 | 77% |

Share of respondents to Intuit's annual Accountant Technology Survey who had at least one hiring struggle in the previous 12 months. In 2026, 725 US accounting and bookkeeping professionals, surveyed in May. Source: Intuit: 2026 Accountant Technology Survey (2026)

So for a firm, hours count for more than adoption: an hour of intake an agent handles in March is an hour your preparers get back in the busiest month of the year.

## How Qvery Takes Client Document Intake Off Your Preparers

We build one AI agent for one firm's client documents.

It reads what arrives in the shared inbox and the client portal, recognizes each W-2, 1099, K-1 and statement, files it in the client's folder, and checks the set against what the client sent last year and what the engagement needs.

It writes to the client about what is missing, and when every document is in, it hands the preparer the file with a short list of the questions it could not settle.

It runs on its own through the season, beside the people who own the work, and the preparer still decides what goes on the return.

To build it, we learn how your team handles intake today and where files go wrong, then connect the agent to the systems you already run: the portal, the document storage, the tax software, the email. A first working version handles real client files within two weeks, and we train the people who work its list.

Once it runs, we report two numbers every week: the hours of chasing, renaming and filing it hands back to your preparers, and the missing or mismatched documents it caught before a return was prepared.

![Five steps: documents arrive, the agent names and files them, checks the set, asks the client for what is missing, and the preparer starts with a complete file.](https://qvery.ai/blog/ai-in-accounting-statistics/illustration-intake-path.webp)

*The preparer's work begins at the last step, with no document left to chase.*

If your preparers still open every PDF a client emails just to find out what it is, that is the job to start with.

Have Us Build the Agent That Handles Your Client Documents: https://calendly.com/qvery-vlad/30min

## Ask Five Questions of the Next AI Survey Someone Sends You

- **Who answered: a person or a firm?** 88% of the accountants in Intuit's survey have used AI,[^1] and 34% of the tax firm respondents in Thomson Reuters' say their firm uses it.[^2] Both are true at once.
- **How many, and who chose them?** The accounting software firm Consero Global reported 97% AI adoption across finance departments from 102 finance leaders at venture-capital and private-equity-backed companies.[^15] That is a true number about 102 people, not about your clients.
- **What exactly was asked?** Used once, used weekly, the default, a whole task handed over, a result measured: each is a different question with a different answer.
- **Who paid for it?** Most figures on this page come from companies that sell AI or software to accountants. That does not make them wrong; it tells you which questions they had reason to ask.
- **Is it a belief or a measurement?** 84% who "agree AI saves time"[^5] and accountants who closed the month 7.5 days sooner[^10] are different kinds of evidence.

Then count one job in your own firm: the hours intake takes per return this season, before anything changes, so that any later number has something to be compared with.

Find the Job AI Should Take Off Your Firm First: https://calendly.com/qvery-vlad/30min

## Frequently asked questions



### What percentage of accountants use AI?

88% of the 725 US accounting and bookkeeping professionals in Intuit's May 2026 survey had used AI for at least one client service in the past year, and 30% say it is the default in their daily work.[^1] In ACCA's global 2026 survey, 52% use AI tools regularly in their roles.[^6]

### How many accounting firms use AI agents?

14% of tax firm respondents in the Thomson Reuters Institute's survey, run in late 2025, say their firm already uses AI agents, and another 33% plan to.[^2] For comparison, 34% say their firm uses generative AI.[^2]

### What do accounting firms use AI for most?

Tax research. 60% of US tax professionals in Blue J and CPA.com's 2026 survey use AI for it at least weekly,[^5] and it tops Thomson Reuters' list among tax and accounting users at 69%, ahead of summarizing documents (57%) and reviewing them (55%).[^2]

### How accurate is AI on tax questions?

On Vals AI's private test of 1,223 hard tax questions, the best of 145 systems answered 80.38% correctly, and the systems ranked 2 to 40 scored between 74.20% and 79.72%.[^3] The misses cluster in multi-step calculations, choosing which rules apply, and recent data.[^3]

### How many finance teams have seen AI make mistakes?

86% of 100 finance chiefs at US companies with $50 million to $500 million in revenue said their team had met at least one inaccurate or made-up figure from AI, in a survey Wakefield Research ran for the AI finance vendor Maximor.[^7] 14% fully trust AI to produce accurate accounting data unaided.[^8]

### Does AI save accountants time?

Most say so: 84% of the tax professionals in Blue J's survey agree.[^5] The one field measurement, Choi and Xie's Stanford working paper on 79 firms using one AI accounting product, found that adopters supported 55% more clients a week and closed the month 7.5 days sooner.[^10] Your own before and after is the number to trust.

### How many accounting firms measure the return on AI?

19% of tax firm respondents in Thomson Reuters' survey say their firm measures the return on its AI tools; 54% say it does not, and 27% don't know.[^2] Where organizations do measure, internal cost savings is the most common metric.[^2]

### Will AI change how accounting firms bill?

Most expect it to. 69% of tax professionals in Blue J's survey anticipate moving to value-based, hybrid or fixed fees,[^5] while 78% of firm respondents in Thomson Reuters' 2026 survey still bill mainly by the hour.[^4] The IRS now says AI cost savings should be passed on openly.[^9]

### Is accounting at risk from AI?

Not by the government's projections. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects employment of accountants and auditors to grow 5% from 2025 to 2035, with about 115,300 openings a year.[^13] The work is changing, though: 51% of ACCA's respondents worry about AI's effect on their jobs.[^6]

### What AI skills do accounting and finance teams lack?

In the AICPA and CIMA survey of more than 1,400 finance leaders, 46% named generative AI as their team's biggest skills gap for 2025, and 8% felt very well prepared to adopt AI.[^16] In ACCA's 2026 survey, 43% say their employer offers AI training, up from 32% a year earlier.[^6]

### Is it safe to put client tax data into AI tools?

Only into secure tools the firm has approved. The IRS reminded preparers in June 2026 that unauthorized use or disclosure of return information carries civil and criminal penalties, and that client data belongs only in secure, approved AI.[^9] 60% of Intuit's respondents say clients asked for proof of AI data protection always or frequently.[^1]

### What does the IRS expect from firms that use AI?

Written procedures. Its June 2026 guidance says firms need internal policies covering AI training for staff, secure data handling, monitoring of AI accuracy and the vetting of outside AI tools, all documented.[^9] Practitioners must still verify the facts, citations and calculations AI produces.[^9]

### Which job should an accounting firm give AI first?

One that repeats on every engagement and ends in a check a person can make in seconds: collecting and filing client documents, coding bank transactions, matching statements to the books. Start where the hours are easy to count before and after, so the saving is a number rather than an impression.

## Sources

[^1]: Intuit, "2026 Accountant Technology Survey: AI, fragmentation, and the future of the profession" (2026), https://www.firmofthefuture.com/news/accountant-tech-survey-2026/
[^2]: Thomson Reuters Institute, "2026 AI in Professional Services Report" (2026), https://www.thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/ewp-m/documents/thomsonreuters/en/pdf/reports/2026-ai-in-professional-services-report.pdf
[^3]: Vals AI, "TaxEval v2 Leaderboard and Methodology" (2026), https://www.vals.ai/benchmarks/tax_eval_v2
[^4]: Thomson Reuters Institute, "2026 State of Tax Professionals Report" (2026), https://blogs.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/06/2026-State-of-Tax-Professionals-Report.pdf
[^5]: CPA.com, "Blue J and CPA.com Survey Finds AI Adoption Among Tax Firms Has Nearly Doubled in One Year" (2026), https://www.cpa.com/news/blue-j-and-cpacom-survey-finds-ai-adoption-among-tax-firms-has-nearly-doubled-one-year
[^6]: ACCA, "Global Talent Trends 2026" (2026), https://www.accaglobal.com/content/dam/ACCA_Global/professional-insights/GTT-2026/gtt-2026-final.pdf
[^7]: CFO Dive, "CFOs insist on human oversight for AI in accounting, study finds" (2026), https://www.cfodive.com/news/massive-trust-gap-hinders-cfo-ai-ambitions-study-finds/810786/
[^8]: GlobeNewswire, "CFOs Set New Bar for Finance AI: Show Your Work and Know When to Stop (Maximor)" (2026), https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/01/28/3227738/0/en/CFOs-Set-New-Bar-for-Finance-AI-Show-Your-Work-and-Know-When-to-Stop.html
[^9]: Internal Revenue Service, "Introductory Guidelines for Responsible AI Use in Federal Tax Practice (Office of Professional Responsibility, Issue 2026-19)" (2026), https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USIRS/bulletins/41d6e70
[^10]: Stanford Graduate School of Business, "Human + AI in Accounting: Early Evidence from the Field (Working Paper No. 4261)" (2025), https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/human-ai-accounting-early-evidence-field
[^11]: Stanford Graduate School of Business, "AI Is Reshaping Accounting Jobs by Doing the “Boring” Stuff" (2025), https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/ai-reshaping-accounting-jobs-doing-boring-stuff
[^12]: AICPA, "CPA Firms Report Steady Growth in Revenue and Profit, AICPA Research Finds" (2025), https://www.aicpa-cima.com/news/article/cpa-firms-report-steady-growth-in-revenue-and-profit-aicpa-research-finds
[^13]: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Occupational Outlook Handbook: Accountants and Auditors" (2026), https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/accountants-and-auditors.htm
[^14]: AICPA, "Accounting Firms Report Strong Hiring Outlook, AICPA Report Finds" (2025), https://www.aicpa-cima.com/news/article/accounting-firms-report-strong-hiring-outlook-aicpa-report-finds
[^15]: CFO.com, "Only 3% of finance leaders are skeptical of future AI payoffs: survey" (2026), https://www.cfo.com/news/only-3-percent-of-finance-leaders-are-skeptical-of-future-ai-payoffs-roi-cfo/820537/
[^16]: AICPA and CIMA, "Future-ready finance: Technology, Productivity, and Skills Survey Report" (2025), https://www.aicpa-cima.com/membership/landing/tech-productivity-skills-survey