Deirdre Barnicle, Partner, McCann FitzGerald: As the pace of technology continues to accelerate, 2025 opened up new possibilities for improving the efficiency of tax practitioners and the Revenue Commissioners alike; the eWHT proposal (discussed above) is one of many instances where tax technology can help to increase compliance.
Deirdre Barnicle
The possibility of employing ‘agentic AI’ was discussed for the first time in 2025 i.e. using an advanced form of AI focused on autonomous decision-making and action. Some have suggested that this form of technology could be particularly helpful in European jurisdictions where near-real-time tax processing is becoming the norm.
Much like other professional areas, AI can assist tax teams in basic tasks such as drafting emails, summarising information and carrying out initial research. However, as many of the professional resources we rely upon to inform our tax practice are behind paywalls and being cognisant of the fact that AI can regularly pull information from publicly available resources from other jurisdictions, it can be of limited use in particular tasks and always requires careful review on the part of practitioners.
One area of tax practice where AI has the potential to bring significant efficiencies is that of data entry in tax compliance work. For example, when reviewing invoices for tax returns, what can be a time consuming and tedious exercise could be transformed by the correct AI tool. Employing AI in this area would also reduce the risk of human error. Again, tax practitioners must remain vigilant and cautious when engaging AI to assist them in their work, because a tool developed without the appropriate safeguards risks the exposure of sensitive client data; client confidentiality must always remain paramount.
On this topic, it is likely that new roles will be created in tax practices to manage these technologies e.g. tax AI-specialists. Proper training to current tax practitioners will also be required.
This article appeared in the February 2026 edition of the Irish Tax Monitor.
