KPMG tests – KPMG US is testing an AI-powered simulation tool, TaxSIM, aimed at speeding up how junior tax staff learn the job as artificial intelligence takes on more repetitive work. The tool will roll out to 10,000 tax staff later this year.
At KPMG US, the days of learning tax prep through years of back-to-back returns are starting to look less necessary.. The firm is testing an AI-powered simulation tool designed to help employees build the same skills through high-volume practice. as the company expects AI to take over more of the repetitive work that used to train professionals on the job.
Brad Brown. KPMG’s chief digital officer for tax. said the motivation is simple: junior staff won’t get as many repetitions doing the same task as they did before.. “You’re not going to get as many repetitions of doing that task as you would have in the past. ” Brown said.. “So we needed something to fill that void.”
Before the AI era. Brown said. an early-career tax professional at KPMG typically spent about four years preparing returns for clients. one after another.. That repetition, he said, helped build judgment.. As employees gained experience, they could shift toward advising—offering guidance on how business decisions, regulations, and tax consequences connect.
The software. called TaxSIM. is built to help workers develop those skills “much more rapidly.” It is designed to rely on high-volume. high-speed simulation so employees can learn the ins and outs of tax prep without preparing as many returns from scratch. Brown said.. TaxSIM will be available to KPMG’s 10,000 tax staffers later in the year.
The training effort targets a wider workplace tension: what happens to professional development when AI takes over the rote tasks that help people become competent in the first place. KPMG’s approach is to recreate that learning through scenarios rather than real return preparation.
TaxSIM was developed with Centaurian AI.. Kes Sampanthar. cofounder and CEO of Centaurian AI. compared the training concept to the game “Gran Turismo. ” which simulates driving a Formula 1 course.. “It’s like the top athlete who gets better and better if they can get the right feedback,” Sampanthar said.
Instead of waiting years to encounter different client situations. Brown said. tax workers will be able to cycle through simulated scenarios.. The tool presents different results based on users’ decisions.. Brown described the effect on skill-building as speed: “That just gives us incredible acceleration to create those skills.”
Brown acknowledged that some early-career workers are expressing concern about how they will build skills as AI takes on more work.. He said the need to keep learning “cuts across every rung of the ladder.” More experienced workers can also use the tool to dig into broader concepts. including changing economic conditions.. Sampanthar pointed to an example involving tariffs and said the simulations can show how those changes ripple through organizations and countries. adding. “These are things you normally don’t get feedback on.”
Sampanthar said the system is designed to push users to work through their own reasoning before turning to AI for help, and that some simulations can’t be done with AI alone. “Learning happens when things are hard, not when things are easy,” he said.
For junior employees, Brown said he expects the tool to accelerate the development of analytical skills and help some employees move up more quickly. In some cases, that might mean managing teams of AI agents and spending less time working the tasks themselves “through the midnight hour,” he said.
Even with the simulations, Brown said the intent isn’t to replace every task with AI.. He described a first-year tax analyst who told him they wanted to build their first valuation model by hand before learning through simulation.. Brown said the person’s thinking was. “It’s OK to do one or two. but I don’t need to do four years of these to get to that level of skill.”
The scheduling shift at the core of KPMG’s approach ties together the firm’s expectations about AI and the way employees learn: Brown said AI will reduce the number of task repetitions available. and TaxSIM is built to “fill that void” by replacing some years of return preparation with high-volume simulation that still produces decision-based feedback.
KPMG’s pilot is therefore aimed at preserving a learning path—judgment first. then advisory-level thinking—while changing how much of it happens through real work.. With TaxSIM scheduled to reach 10. 000 tax staff later this year. the company is betting that faster practice with scenarios can stand in for the slower. repetition-heavy training cycle that staff experienced before the AI era.
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