IRS AI oversight is now official: ProConnect Tax was built for it

On June 24, 2026, the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) issued Alert 2026-19, “Introductory Guidelines for Responsible AI Use in Federal Tax Practice.”

This Alert is important because, as the IRS states, “Virtually all professional tax firms use some form of AI, whether they are aware of it or not.” However, this isn’t a new law; it’s a confirmation that Circular 230, the ethical framework you already operate under, applies fully to AI-assisted work. Due diligence, competence, confidentiality, and reasonable fees: None of that changes because a machine helped draft the document. What does change is that the IRS has now put it in writing, and firms that haven’t formalized their AI practices have a clear signal to start.

Here’s what the guidance actually says, and how Intuit® ProConnect™ Tax was built around the same principle long before the IRS wrote it down: AI should amplify your judgment, not replace it.

What the guidance says

The IRS grounded the alert in five existing Circular 230 provisions, plus two Internal Revenue Code (IRC) sections on data protection. What’s worth reading in the IRS’s own language:

Due diligence (§10.22). “A practitioner must exercise due diligence in preparing or assisting in the preparation of, approving, and filing tax returns, documents, affidavits, and other papers relating to Internal Revenue Service matters.” This means reviewing every AI-created document before it goes to a client or the IRS, including verifying facts, citations, and calculations. “Practitioners cannot rely solely on AI; human scrutiny and editing are essential.”

Fees (§10.27(a)). “A practitioner may not charge an unconscionable fee in connection with any matter before the Internal Revenue Service.” If AI cuts your research and drafting time, billing as though it didn’t may cross a line. The guidance: Pass any efficiency gains to clients openly and disclose the AI activity involved.

Competence (§10.35). “A practitioner must possess the necessary competence to engage in practice before the Internal Revenue Service.” That competence now extends to the tools themselves, such as understanding how your AI generates content, where it can be wrong, and when its output isn’t fit to use.

Firm procedures (§10.36). Firm leadership must “take reasonable steps to ensure that the firm has adequate procedures in effect for all members, associates, and employees.” This can include documenting,staff training, internal usage rules, secure data handling, and accuracy monitoring.

Written advice (§10.37). Advice must be “based on reasonable factual and legal assumptions” and “reasonably consider all relevant facts and circumstances.” If you can’t hand a client an AI-drafted position without independently verifying it, treat it as a first draft, not a final answer.

Layered on top: IRC §§6713 and 7216(a) hold you accountable for unauthorized disclosure of tax return information, a real risk if client data ends up in an unsecured or public AI tool.

Boiled down, here’s a do/don’t gut check for your practice, built on the IRS’s own best-practices list:

The through-line: AI can do the work of a very fast associate, but it. can’t be the practitioner of record. As the IRS put it in its conclusion, “Final decisions must always rest with qualified professionals who understand the complexities of tax law and ethical standards.”

Why this matters more than ever

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Your firm is under more pressure to deliver more services with fewer hands than at almost any point in recent memory. Fewer people are entering the profession than are leaving it, and the firms still standing are being asked to do the job of an accountant and a strategist at once.

According to the 2026 Intuit Accountants Technology Survey, 77% of firms reported difficulty hiring, while at the same time, accountants say clients are asking for more guidance on technology management (62%), business strategy (59%), and general business advice (54%), all on top of tax preparation and planning.

This is the math AI is meant to solve: 86% of accountants expect AI to increase their advisory capacity over the next year, but 30% say manual data cleanup is the single biggest thing standing in the way. Every hour AI gives back on data entry, review, and admin is an hour you can spend on the conversation your clients are already asking for. That’s not a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between a practice that can absorb more scope and one that can’t.

How Intuit ProConnect Tax already puts this into practice

We built ProConnect Tax’s AI around the same idea the IRS just wrote into guidance: AI should surface, prepare, and draft. You, the expert, should review, approve, and sign.

Client onboarding AI is where a new engagement starts. Import a prior-year 1040. ProConnect Tax drafts a personalized document checklist and a client questionnaire, and even summarizes the prior return, so you walk into a discovery call already informed. But the agent doesn’t send anything on its own. You review what it drafts and choose when it goes to the client, keeping you as the point of accountability as required.

SmartReturn picks up once those documents start coming back. Batch-import client documents from multiple sources, including screenshots, PDFs, and prior-year returns, and ProConnect Tax extracts the data and populates the 1040 automatically. But, nothing files itself. SmartReturn gives you a side-by-side view of every source document next to where its data landed on the return, so you confirm accuracy before you move on. That’s the IRS guidance, built into the workflow instead of bolted on after.

Diagnostics is where competence and due diligence meet before you file. It checks every return against thousands of diagnostics, flagging what needs a second look.

Intuit Tax Advisor, built into ProConnect Tax, takes that same time savings straight into the advisory conversation your clients are already asking for. Intuit Intelligence scans a client’s return, surfaces relevant tax-saving strategies from a built-in strategy library, and helps you build a custom, client-ready plan in minutes instead of hours. Intuit Tax Advisor does not finalize a plan; you decide which strategies actually go in, and the report your client sees only reflects what you approved. AI can surface a strategy, but the reasonable factual and legal judgment behind recommending it stays with you.

Intuit Accountant Suite connects the return to the rest of your practice. ProConnect Tax integrates with Intuit Accountant Suite, an AI-native platform built for you to automate work, scale your expertise, and amplify your advisory work. Client, team, and firm data live together and sync in real time, so the numbers behind a return don’t sit stranded in your tax software while books, billing, and client records live somewhere else. For an IRS requirement written for “all members, associates, and employees,” that kind of connected data, instead of a patchwork of disconnected tools, is what makes firm-wide oversight realistic instead of aspirational.

None of these tools make a decision for you. They clear the routine work off your desk so the decision is the only thing left for you to make, which is exactly the standard OPR just spelled out.

The bottom line

The IRS’s guidance isn’t asking the profession to slow down on AI. It’s asking you to be deliberate about how you use it: verify the output, document the process, keep a qualified preparer in the loop, and disclose what you’re doing. That’s a standard ProConnect Tax was designed to meet from the start, because it’s the only standard that makes sense for tax practices: AI built to amplify you, not replace you.

Editor’s note: Intuit Accountant Suite will replace QuickBooks® Online Accountant as of January 1, 2027. Stay tuned to the Intuit Tax Pro Center for articles on transitioning to Intuit Accountant Suite, including this checklist article on how to begin the process.