The future of accounting in 2027: what the data says

Most writing about the future of accounting is prediction dressed up as insight. This piece does something duller and more useful: it counts. We pulled the numbers from surveys, regulators and The Firm’s own reporting, and asked what they mean for a firm owner in Australia, the US or the UK next year.

The short version: AI use is close to universal, but the planning behind it is not. The people pipeline is thin at the bottom and ageing at the top. Growth is moving to the mid-tier and to firms that buy other firms. Compliance is getting more frequent, not less. And somewhere in 2027 the work gets repriced, whether individual firms choose it or not. Every figure below is dated and linked, as at September 2026.

Trend	The number	Source
Firms using AI	98%, with only 21% holding an AI policy or strategy	Karbon, State of AI in Accounting 2026
Firms offering advisory	93%, up from 83% the year before	Wolters Kluwer, Future Ready Accountant 2025
New US CPA exam candidates	42,626 in 2023, 28,082 in 2024	AICPA 2025 Trends report
Australian tax practitioners under 30	1%, while half are over 50	TPB data cited by The Tax Institute
Big Four revenue in the AFR Top 100	All four down, Deloitte by 8.3%	AFR Top 100 2025, via The Firm
UK Making Tax Digital threshold	Drops to £30,000 of qualifying income from April 2027	GOV.UK

Karbon’s State of AI in Accounting 2026 report, drawn from nearly 600 accounting professionals, found 98% of firms now use AI, most of them daily. Only 21% have an AI policy or strategy, and fewer than half invest in training. The same report puts average savings at 60 minutes per employee per day.

The 2025 Future Ready Accountant report from Wolters Kluwer, from more than 2,700 professionals, found 72% of firms use AI at least weekly and 35% daily, and 77% plan to increase AI investment over the next three years.

The gap that matters is between using AI and using it on purpose. At The Firm’s June summit, Karbon’s Twyla Verhelst reported that teams with a written AI strategy save 24% more time than teams without one, and firms with a policy save 23% more. In Australia, Strategic Group’s client surveys found Copilot users saved around 82 minutes per person per week on average, with the gains spread very unevenly inside the same firm.

What it means for 2027: the advantage is no longer having AI. It is having it written down. If your firm is in the 79% without a policy, a one-page AI policy is the cheapest competitive move on this list.

Demand for accountants is not the problem. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of accountants and auditors to grow 5% from 2025 to 2035, with about 115,300 openings a year.

Supply is. The AICPA’s 2025 Trends report counted 55,152 accounting graduates in the 2023-24 academic year, down 6.6%. New CPA exam candidates fell from 42,626 in 2023, a surge ahead of the exam changes, to 28,082 in 2024. There are early signs of a turn: 16,448 new candidates in the first six months of 2025, and two consecutive semesters of 12% year-on-year growth in accounting enrolments.

In Australia the pressure sits at the other end. The Tax Institute’s own figures, which we covered when it agreed to join the IPA Group, showed members over 45 rising from 64% in 2022 to 70% in 2025, and cited Tax Practitioners Board data showing half of Australian tax practitioners are over 50 and 1% are under 30. The AFR Top 100 for 2025 recorded a 6% drop in total staff numbers across the list.

What it means for 2027: the graduate work AI is absorbing is also how graduates used to learn. Firms that redesign training around review rather than data entry will hire better, and Karbon’s respondents agree: 91% believe graduates are more likely to join firms that actively use AI. Our accounting careers guide covers what that means for the people you are trying to hire.

The 2025 AFR Top 100 was the first in years where all four of the Big Four went backwards: Deloitte down 8.3%, PwC almost 6%, KPMG 4% and EY 2.7%. Below them, BDO grew 12.3%, RSM 11% and William Buck 14.7%. The fastest growers on the list got there largely through acquisitions rather than organic work.

Consolidation is reaching the professional bodies too. The Tax Institute signed a formal contract in August 2026 to join the IPA Group, subject to conditions, after its membership fell from 9,642 in 2022 to 8,716 in 2025.

Damon Anderson, speaking at the summit, argued the next wave in the UK will look less like private equity stitching unrelated practices together and more like groups of tech-led firms sharing systems behind a trusted brand at the front.

What it means for 2027: if you are a seller, a buyer or a target, clean systems and documented processes are what get valued. Our guide to integrating a firm after an acquisition shows where deals come apart.

Two dates shape 2027:

• UK. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax began on 6 April 2026 for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000. From April 2027 the threshold falls to £30,000, and to £20,000 from April 2028. Each step pulls in more clients who now file quarterly updates.
• Australia. AUSTRAC opened enrolment for accountants on 31 March 2026, and AML/CTF obligations applied from 1 July 2026: an AML/CTF program, customer due diligence, suspicious matter reporting and record keeping. 2027 is the first full year of living with them.

Meanwhile the slowest part of the process has barely moved. Anderson cited a “delay-day index” of 50 to 60 days between a transaction happening and a ledger seeing it, a figure he says has not changed much in a decade.

Check your own obligations with HMRC, AUSTRAC or your professional body. This is reporting, not legal or tax advice.

Advisory is now close to universal as an offer: 93% of firms provide it according to Wolters Kluwer, up from 83% a year earlier, and 35% of clients are asking their firm for strategic business advice. Compliance is still where most revenue sits, as the Top 100 data showed.

The pressure comes from time. When a task that took an afternoon takes twenty minutes, an hourly price for it stops making sense to the client first and the firm second. Anderson’s forecast for what he calls the Great Reset, the point when most people actually feel AI in the profession, is December 2027, within a window of September 2027 to June 2028. He expects the date to be wrong. His more useful point is that it only takes one large firm to reprice before the rest of the market realises it is in a different ballpark.

This is not a job-loss story, at least not yet. When Intuit cut 3,000 roles in May 2026, the numbers pointed to a restructure under share-price pressure rather than AI replacing accountants.

The Firm does not publish fee figures, and neither should anyone else. What you can do is decide how you price before a competitor decides it for you. Our piece on pricing work an AI drafted walks through the method, and getting paid upfront covers the cash side.

1. Write the AI policy and a one-paragraph strategy. The data says intention, not access, is what separates the firms saving time.
2. Redesign the first two years of a graduate’s job around reviewing AI output, and say so when you recruit.
3. Document your core processes. They are what an acquirer values, what an AI agent follows and what a new hire learns from.
4. Map your 2027 compliance calendar by client, including MTD thresholds or AML/CTF obligations where they apply.
5. List every service priced by time and decide, service by service, how you will price it when the time drops.

The AI for accounting firms hub collects everything The Firm has published on the practical side. And if you want the 2027 planning conversation in one place, the AI in Practice Summit on 11 and 12 November 2026 gives its whole second day to pricing, hiring, tools and liability for next year. It is free, and CPD is included through AccrediWise.

The future of accounting in 2027 is not a robot doing the tax return. It is a smaller, older workforce, more frequent compliance, clients who expect advice, and prices that no longer map to hours. What the numbers add is timing. The firms that write down how they use AI, document their processes and decide their pricing in the next twelve months will set the terms the rest react to.

Will AI replace accountants by 2027?

The data points the other way. US employment of accountants and auditors is projected to grow 5% over the decade to 2035, and the profession’s shortage is of people, not work. What AI changes is which tasks people do and how that work is priced.

What are the biggest accounting industry trends for 2027?

Five show up in the numbers: near-universal AI use without matching policy, a thin and ageing talent pipeline, growth shifting to the mid-tier and acquirers, more frequent compliance in the UK and Australia, and pressure to move pricing away from time.

Is the accounting talent shortage getting better?

There are early signs in the US. After graduate numbers kept falling, the AICPA’s latest report pointed to a pickup in new CPA candidates in the first half of 2025 and two semesters of rising accounting enrolments. In Australia, the age profile of registered tax practitioners suggests the retirement pressure is still building.

Does the Big Four’s revenue drop matter to a small firm?

Indirectly. It shows enterprise clients breaking work into smaller engagements with specialist firms, and it shows growth going to firms with better systems and to acquirers. Small firms feel it as more consolidation offers and more competition for experienced staff.

How should a firm prepare its pricing for 2027?

List the services currently priced on time, estimate how long each will take with the tools you already have, and decide how to price the outcome instead. The Firm will not suggest a number, because that decision belongs to each firm.