Good morning, Agent! How a Tax Associate will work in two years

A Tax Associate today usually starts their day the same way: log in to the terminal server, open DATEV, open Outlook, open Teams. Check deadlines, process emails, chase missing receipts, post receipts, clarify questions. A significant part of the day is spent on activities that have little to do with why you chose the profession in the first place: the technical work on the numbers and the advisory of the clients.

That is going to change, and faster than many think. The reason is a development running in the tech world under the term "agentic". This refers to AI systems that do not just react to individual commands, but plan across multiple steps, make decisions independently, and take over entire workflows. The tool you operate becomes an actor that works. At Limetax, we are already using such agents today for accounting, account reconciliation, research, and annual financial statement preparation.

To show what this means in concrete terms, a scenario helps. It is deliberately kept concrete, but remains a scenario. Exactly what cooperation between human and AI will look like in two years, no one can say with certainty today. The direction, however, is clear.

A Tuesday in twelve months

Sabine is a Tax Associate. She comes into the office shortly after nine, gets a coffee, and logs in. Where DATEV, Outlook, and Teams used to be open side-by-side, today she only opens one application. This single interface brings together everything she needs for her day.

What she sees there is the work that has happened while she was away. Seven financial accounting processes are ready to the point where they only need to be released. In five others, there are questions. Three clients are marked with a note. An appointment is prepared, several emails are drafted. Sabine has not yet lifted a finger, and a large part of her day is already sorted.

This is made possible by a system of several agents working together in the background. One of them plays a special role.

One coordinator and many specialists

The agent Sabine works with directly is called Otto. Otto is not a specialist, but a coordinator. He knows Sabine's clients, her processes, and her deadlines, and he distributes the work to specialized agents in the background. For financial accounting, there is, for example, an agent who knows exactly how to handle an invoice with incorrectly declared reverse charge or with the wrong invoice recipient.

How this division of labor works is shown by the first case of the day. In one client's case, a conspicuously large number of receipts are missing. The specialist agent recognizes this and considers a conversation sensible. Otto, who knows the client, then drafts an email with appointment proposals. Sabine reads it, finds it suitable, and sends it off.

In the next case, the difference between a system that recognizes patterns and one that understands contexts becomes clear. An agent has noticed significant turnover deviations in three clients compared to previous months. Since the income tax prepayment is measured based on the anticipated annual tax, an adjustment of the prepayments can make sense. For two clients, Otto has prepared the corresponding emails, Sabine sends them off. In the third client's case, a suggestion is missing. From the minutes of the last conversation, Otto knows that significantly higher revenues are to be expected again in the following month. An adjustment would not make sense, so he does not even propose it.

This is the core of the model. The specialist agents deliver depth, Otto delivers context, and together they prepare the workday before Sabine is in the office. Everything is sorted into three categories: done, needs checking, requires communication with the client.

The decision remains with the human

Seventeen receipts need Sabine's professional assessment. The responsible agent has made suggestions and explained what to watch out for, but wants an expert eye because the cases are not clear-cut. Sabine accepts ten proposals unchanged and adjusts the depreciation period in two cases.

One case involves a complex question regarding the capitalization of self-created intangible assets. Here Sabine wants to be on the safe side and involves the tax advisor. She selects him in the application and forwards the case. The tax advisor sees the request directly in his own view, with the full context that the agents have already gathered. No separate email, no searching for documents, no questions on the facts.

This is the actual division of tasks we are talking about. The agents take over the ongoing, declaratory work and prepare decisions. The decisions themselves, especially the ambiguous ones, remain with the human with the appropriate qualifications.

From processing to advisory

Before her second coffee, Sabine is done with the bulk of the ongoing work. A client has replied to an appointment suggestion, and the calendar invitation has been sent automatically.

Sabine today manages about three times as many clients as a year ago, and yet she has more time rather than less. Time for professional training and for the work that really moves clients forward. After financial accounting was completed, an agent had already reviewed the analyses for potential advisory opportunities. The rest of the day Sabine spends coordinating with clients and clarifying concrete advisory needs. In the afternoon, a workshop on current developments in German tax law is scheduled.

What this means for tax advisory & accounting firms

Two things follow from this scenario, and both affect every tax advisory & accounting firm.

First, the role of the specialist changes. Manual, declaratory work recedes into the background; checking, assessment, and advisory move forward. For many a Tax Associate, this is an upgrade of their activities, provided that the tax advisory & accounting firm takes them along this path and qualifies them accordingly.

Second, the profitability of the tax advisory & accounting firm changes. If a specialist can manage a multiple of clients while having more time for advisory, this shifts the entire cost calculation per employee. This is the real answer to the shortage of skilled professionals: not more people for the same work, but the same people for significantly more and significantly more demanding work.

At Limetax, we are working towards this future. The agents for financial accounting, account reconciliation, and research are already in use, and the application in which Sabine begins her day is being built step-by-step. Whether it will look exactly like this scenario in two years, we do not know. But the direction is right, and it is closer than most tax advisory & accounting firms assume.