An Accountant Handed 240 Hours to AI. Which Part Did He Keep for Himself?

Doing the sales-tax filing for one client takes two to three hours. Eighty clients adds up to 160 to 240 hours per filing period; when clients change their data partway through, that's another 40 to 80 hours. Taiwanese accountant Chuang Shih-chin recently shared publicly that his firm is gradually handing this whole stretch of time over to AI agents. The point isn't "using AI to generate reports." What they did is far more basic: break the filing process apart step by step, pulling data, formatting it, running the system, producing working papers, assisting with the filing, and writing each step into a clear rule. Spell out the process first, and only then can an agent take it on. Few people used to do this, because turning the steps inside an old hand's head into black-and-white text takes too much effort. The hardest part of professional work to hand off is exactly this "can do it, but can't explain it" piece; when a veteran trains a newcomer, often less than thirty percent gets passed down. Now the cost of organizing it has dropped: as you work, AI helps you record the steps as rules, and where you're stuck with words on the tip of your tongue, it'll even ask you questions back. The same move holds up in a different setting. In an online course on "how to ask the right questions," students expected to hear a pile of sentence templates for talking to AI. Instead, the instructor Li Chia-ta gave them three questions: What's your goal? What are your constraints? What are you really trying to solve? Get these three clear first, and often, before AI even answers, the next step surfaces on its own. The two stories say the same thing: whether AI can take it on depends on how clearly you break it down. Break the process down clearly and it carries off 240 hours; break the problem down clearly and the answer it gives fits your situation. Everyone who's been at something for a few years has a stretch of "only I know how, but I can't explain it." In the past it could only retire along with you; now it's worth finding an afternoon to break it apart and write it down together with AI. The parts you can break out can be handed off later. The part you can't, the judgment, the trade-offs, talking things through with people, taking responsibility when something goes wrong, will be where you grow more and more valuable. On the accounting firm's list, the year-end close, working papers, and anomaly alerts are still further back in line, waiting one by one to be handed off.