The untapped Tax Technology market

I was looking at enterprise market sizes this week, and one ratio completely blew my mind:

For every $1 companies spend on CRM software, they spend roughly $2 on consulting. For ERP and HR, it’s about $1 to $3.

Then you look at Tax & Accounting:

• Software: $10.1B
• Professional Services: $720.8B

That’s a 1 to 71 ratio.

Why is the gap so massive?

Historically, simple SaaS ran into a structural brick wall in tax, especially in complex areas like Transfer Pricing, because traditional software couldn't overcome four key blockers:

• Transaction data, intercompany agreements, and rules are scattered across entities and live in messy, unstructured spreadsheets and siloed ERPs.
• Creating segment-level, entity-by-entity P&Ls to calculate pricing or track margins requires heavy manual spreadsheet manipulation.
• Intercompany processes are flooded with exceptions, policy overrides and manual adjustments.
• OTP sits between Tax, Supply Chain, Finance, and Accounting, meaning multiple stakeholders without a single owner or executor.

Traditional SaaS was built to automate predictable workflows, not to handle complex intercompany flows. As a result, companies were forced to rely on manual spreadsheets or outsource to service providers.

This is why AI-native platforms change the equation.

By continuously ingesting messy company data and rules, automating financial data segmentation, routing complex exceptions, and orchestrating cross-functional workflows, AI-native software bridges the gap between expert judgement and dynamic operational execution.

The big opportunity in Tax Tech isn't replacing human talent. It's building the AI-native tools that empower in-house tax teams to take full control of their operational execution, while giving advisory firms the tools to scale their practices and deliver higher-value strategic guidance.

Starting with Intercompany and Transfer Pricing.

What other service-heavy industries do you see adopting AI alongside human expertise?

Sources: Gartner, IDC, Fortune Business Insights, Grand View Research.