A Day of Tax Technology in Action
On August 6,2026, GTM’s Tax Automation Services (TAS) team hosted ENVISION 2026, bringing together clients and colleagues for a full day exploring where tax technology is headed and how firms are putting it to work right now. As the team dedicated to helping other tax teams modernize their processes, TAS built the agenda around what it knows best. Sessions moved from AI strategy to hands-on tool training, covering tax provision reporting, Power Platform tools, indirect tax automation, and the evolving role of the tax technologist, culminating in a look at how agentic AI is reshaping the profession.
Setting the Stage
A highlight of the day was the session “Advanced Tax Provision Reporting,” where GTM’s Dante Colonna and Ricot Jean joined Erica Murray, Tax Director at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, to show how enhanced reporting layers, including tax account rollforwards and effective tax rate visualizations in Power BI, can close the gap left by rigid provision software templates. The panel on “Creating Future Tax Technologists” brought together GTM Managing Director Anthony Sorrentino with tax technology leaders Jeff Beauchamp of SAP, Danielle Beluch of Chemours, Katie Miller of GSK, and Andrea Santoro of DLL to discuss what it now takes to bridge tax process knowledge with the systems that deliver it.
Hands-On Breakout Training
The afternoon offered attendees their choice of hands-on breakout training across multiple tracks, all led by GTM TAS team members. Blake Lowry and Haley Lighthall led back-to-back workshops on SharePoint and Power Automate, covering everything from document library fundamentals to building flows across the Power Platform’s 1,000-plus connectors. Valerie Brooks and Agnes Wojtowicz paired up for Power Query and Power BI training, walking attendees from data transformation through to interactive dashboards. Nicole Browne and Laren Hendrickson, joined by Noah Tkach of PPL Corporation, presented “Unlocking the Power of VBA for Excel in Tax,” a case study on the ripple effects of automation for tax teams, built around a real PPL engagement. Rounding out the breakouts, Dave Hillegass led “Advanced Automation in Sales & Use Tax,” mapping the indirect tax technology landscape and showing how AI, RPA, and compliance software fit together.
The AI Update: From Prompts to Agents
The day closed with “The AI Update: From Prompts to Agents,” presented by Anthony Sorrentino and Dante Colonna, who walked through twelve months of rapid change, from single-turn chat assistants to agents that now read and write directly into ERP, provision, and filing systems. They shared just how much the largest firms in the profession have bet on this shift. Combined, the Big Four have invested more than $9 billion in AI, standing up agentic platforms that already number in the tens of thousands of deployed agents and committing billions more toward multi-agent orchestration, governance, and firm-wide rollouts in the years ahead.
The session closed with a live demonstration of a tax provision review agent handling detection, verification, and correspondence end-to-end, with a human reviewer stepping in only for judgment calls.
The biggest takeaway: The constraint has shifted from crafting the perfect prompt to data quality, process design, and governance — the parts no vendor can sell you.
Thank you to everyone who joined us, presented, and shared feedback throughout the day. Session slides are available upon request, and TAS looks forward to bringing this conversation forward at future GTM events. Thank you also to our sponsors: VRC, Thomson Reuters, CSC Corptax, Brewer Morris, and TEI Philadelphia.
