Google Cloud Next 2025 | Tiffany Chu & Jonathan Howe, PwC

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Jonathan Howe

Global Tax Compliance Leader

PwC

Tiffany Chu

US Tax Technology Lead

PwC

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play_circle_outline Data Control Engine for cleansing and analyzing data to enable automation

play_circle_outline Upskilling tax professionals for top-down analysis and decision-making

play_circle_outline Continuous learning and adaptation necessary in fast-paced digital transformation era

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Tiffany Chu & Jonathan Howe, PwC

Jonathan Howe

Global Tax Compliance Leader PwC

Tiffany Chu

US Tax Technology Lead PwC

Understanding the Intersection of Tax and Technology at Google Cloud Next 2025

Tiffany Chu, tax director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Jonathan Howe, principal, join theCUBE at Google Cloud Next 2025 to discuss the evolving landscape of tax in the era of digital transformation.

In this insightful discussion, Chu and Howe share their experience and expertise in navigating the complex world of tax automation and data management. As leaders at PricewaterhouseCoopers, they address the challenges organizations face in managing vast amounts of tax da... Read more

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What are some of the challenges and considerations companies face when it comes to tax returns and data management? add

What steps are being taken to improve the handling and analysis of tax data in the current business environment? add

What is the fundamental shift happening in the finance profession, particularly in tax, in terms of data analysis and review processes? add

What is the nature of staying up-to-date and upskilled in today's world? add

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Tiffany Chu & Jonathan Howe, PwC

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Savannah Peterson

>> Good morning nerd fam, and welcome back to Las Vegas, Nevada. We're here day two of Google Cloud Next, midway through day two. My name is Savannah Peterson, bringing you all the fun and thrilling insights with Dave Vellante this week. Dave, this topic of conversation we're talking about next doesn't always come up on theCUBE.

Dave Vellante

>> Well, it's that time of year.

Savannah Peterson

>> It is that time of year. You guessed it folks, we're going to be talking about taxes. Very excited to have Jonathan and Tiffany here with us today. Thank you so much for jumping on the stage and making the time this morning.

>> Thank you for having us.

Dave Vellante

>> Welcome.

Savannah Peterson

>> I feel almost self-conscious about my own taxes right now, just sitting here next to you. I'm an extension filer. Shout out to all the extension filers in this world. But the tax jokes aside, tax and technology, talk to us a little bit about all that data, how we can automate it and maybe make tax day less scary.

Savannah Peterson

>> That was a big question, wasn't it to start with?

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, I thought I warm us up real gentle.

Savannah Peterson

>> . I'll tell you what, I'll start off. So when we think about tax and we think about doing tax returns, we often think just about putting numbers on forms. But that's not the story. When we look at clients, the most important thing is what numbers you're going to put in their form and where's it come from, and that comes from data. And our clients often spend 60, 70, 80% of their time actually trying to get the data right before they even think about doing the forms. And if you think about looking across a company, they will have multiple filings in every territory around the world for every type of tax, for every type of regulation, legal. Some of those are annual, but some are monthly, some are real time. A huge amount of resources go into it. It's a huge burden. And actually, at the end of the day, although it's a license to trade, companies don't really get any value out of doing that. So what we're looking at is how do you reduce that burden? How do you drive efficiency? How do you keep high quality? But at the same time, as part of that process, how do you actually give some value back to companies? And to me, that's all about data and to deal with any of that, it's about technology.

Dave Vellante

>> Go ahead, please.

>> I think that's very true. I think a lot of companies have focused on, a lot of taxpayers have focused on how do I automate the process? But really what you're trying to do is to go upstream beyond that because that's really where the problems are starting. It's not how quickly can I put numbers on forms. It's how can I get the data right so that, as I'm actually in the form prep process, it's really, I've already solved all of the issues I've already analyzed everything. I really, at that point, can automate. But the problem that we've been having is that we keep talking about automation. The issue is actually much more upstream.

Dave Vellante

>> As an analyst, I sit on a lot of earnings calls and the CFO always says, "Our tax rate is going to be X." And the analysts put it into their model. It's just one number, but that number comes from this very complex bottoms-up process that you just described. I wonder if we could double-click on that a little bit. It seems so trivial and it's actually pretty accurate usually. Every now and then there's, "Well, I kind missed the tax rate." But organizations seemingly, from my standpoint, do a pretty good job at that. True, not true? Where's there room for improvement?

>> I think it's funny that you said we're at this time of year, this time of year for a tax person is actually all year. So it is an ongoing thing, and there's actually, I saw a meme the other day out there of a CFO has asked for like, "Can I get my cash tax rate?" And it's a picture of him sitting at the beach waiting, sitting at the coffee machine waiting, constantly waiting. Because that data is not readily available in a lot of cases, you end up asking your tax department for like, "What is my cash tax rate? What is my effective tax rate?" And the amount of churn that happens on the back end to be able to go back and provide, in a lot of cases, not actually one rate, but we like to provide a range because there's different ways of looking at it, but it is because the data and the accumulation of everything coming to ultimately where tax is at the very end of any data cycle, we are the ultimate end before it... It doesn't go anywhere else after us. The amount of churn that has to happen, it's a lot. And that's what companies are struggling with.

Dave Vellante

>> It's not the end number. All of my clients around the world, well nearly all of them, they comply. They get there, they do what they have to do, they're compliant. The point is, how much effort went into that and where could you better use that effort? So if you think about how things are moving so quickly now, then businesses want insights. They want strategy. They want responses right now. And to do that, you need tax-ready data. If we think about that compliance process, 90% of my clients think the burden of compliance reporting will be greater next year. Only about 10% are going to have any additional funds. At the same time, with all the changes we have geopolitically now, businesses want more insight, more strategy, on addition to compliance. So you have to free up time and skills to do that. Ninety-five percent of companies say they have a tax skill shortage. That's basically everyone-

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow. That's a significant data point.

>> Do not have the right skills.

Savannah Peterson

>> My goodness.

>> But actually, they already have highly skilled people, but they're sitting here with data in spreadsheets doing reconciliations. You want to free those people up to bring real value to your business. That's what we're trying to do.

>> And think more strategically about the investments that you're making as a company, when you're making them, how you're allocating that spend across the company.

>> Exactly.

>> You think about stuff like AI, it requires money. It requires...

Savannah Peterson

>> Go for it.

Dave Vellante

>> It's really a data problem is what you're saying.

Savannah Peterson

>> It's exactly what I was just going to say.

>> It's a data problem, and you mentioned already, you just briefly referred to AI. All of our companies now sitting there saying, "Great, we've got to automate more. We've got to use AI." But to do that well, you've got to have good data to put it over.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's the mission-critical thing.

>> And so think they've got all this vision of what they're going to transform in AI, but until you transform data, you're not going to get there.

Savannah Peterson

>> Nobody wants to do the dirty laundry of cleaning that data and .

Dave Vellante

>> Oh, we want to do.

Savannah Peterson

>> Exactly. I feel like it's always like, "I really want the outcome," and also there's this work that needs to be done in order to achieve that outcome I think. So what are some of the tips that you're sharing with companies right now in particular. We've never been in a time, speaking of data, never been in a time where there's more data being created, and I'm sure that impacts your world as well. So what are the pro tips? Tiffany, I'll start with you. You're both welcome to chime in.

>> Well, I think we're seeing actually a fundamental shift in how we look at tax and more specifically how we look at reporting and compliance. And leading up to, it is a shift in, we do need to do something about the data. But also, and Jonathan and I talk about this all the time, as tax people, I think we understand, we may never get perfect data. In an ideal world, yes, we would love to be at a company where tax is sitting at the table, and as a PO is getting created, as a purchase order is getting created, we're thinking about the tax implications of what happens. Realistically, that doesn't always happen. That actually very seldom happens. And so what that means is, as a tax professional, we are dealing with the hand that has been dealt with us and making the most of it. That's, I think, the strategy going forward. And that is part of, frankly, what we are developing and teaming with Google Cloud with in our alliance. We're deploying now data controls engine, and Jonathan can definitely talk more about that. But that is looking at a agreed-upon procedures, controls-based, risk-assessed process of looking at data so that we can cleanse it, identify anomalies, and then move forward into a process that actually allows automation to occur. But by determining the amount of risk that we are willing to accept, by applying controls and standard tests upon the data, then we can determine the quality of data that then goes forward into the compliance process. So John, I know we've been working on that for a long time now and we're super excited to talk about it.

Dave Vellante

>> So data control engine, I think of it as a data product. Is that the way to think about it?

Savannah Peterson

>> I would definitely say that. So it's now live. We've been working on it long way. It's live, it's working, we're working with clients. It's basically a cloud data hub, which has been populated with PwC tax dictionaries, validations, records, our tax IP, and then we'll run a whole series of tests over huge amounts of data, real time and fast. So if you think about it, historically, we'll say to a client, "Sure, we'll help you with the tax return. Can you give us the data we need?" They would spend tens of thousands of hours, because the data what comes out of ERP isn't fit for purpose for tax. Different materialities, different ways of treating it for every tax, in every jurisdiction around the world. So they spend thousands of hours looking for errors, making reconciliations, looking for oddities, invoices without a proper description, all of that very low level work, but usually done by highly skilled, expensive people. So we can now say, "Just give us that. Instead of giving us clean data, give us bad dirty data."

Dave Vellante

>> Give us what you have.

Savannah Peterson

>> We'll run it straight through.

Dave Vellante

>> Give us the shoebox.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah.

>> Go straight through and we're going to tell you the few things that look odd that need fixing. We'll help you fix it. And of course it's not a one-off because that flows back into the systems as part of continuous improvement. Frees up a huge amount of time for the client, makes it more efficient for us, and it means they can go off and be more strategic. To really bring that value to a business, you need good quality data, you need time, you need skills, and that's what we're trying to do, free up all those things.

Savannah Peterson

>> And so let's talk about those skills a little bit. You talked about the expensive people who normally deal with that, and I'm curious how you've been upskilling your team internally as technologies have been advancing. Well, let's start with that and then I've got a follow-up to that. But how do you keep everybody as up to date as humanly possible across your org?

>> There's a fundamental shift going on right now obviously overall in, and I'll say the finance profession, but a lot within tax. I think when thinking about what comes out of data controls engines and what we just talked about, in the past, we've had people that were focused on wrangling data. There was a significant amount of time doing that, and then a small component of time actually analyzing and even then resolving issues. So if you just take that flow, what's happening now is that wrangling of data, that's already done. I don't need you to come in and do that anymore. I actually need you to spend your time being able to analyze and review something that you did not prepare. How do you get comfortable just taking something that's been given to you, reviewing it even though you weren't developing it bottoms up? So it is forcing professionals to think about things, frankly from a top-down perspective of, I need to be able to go executive summary down to identify issues. As opposed to in the past, the way that a lot of people have grown up in this very pyramid structure in professional services is, I prep something, then I review it, then I'm the second reviewer and then I sign it. Well, at this point now we're actually moving professionals. You're coming in at the middle of the pyramid now. The skills that are being asked of you is not to prep and review and do the second review. I want you actually to come in and just do the second review from the beginning.

Savannah Peterson

>> So it's nice though. It's probably a more exciting place to jump off the diving board in that middle.

Savannah Peterson

>> It's definitely a shift in how I think people are having to think. And I'll be honest with you, I think it is a little startling right now for the industry. It is a very fast upskilling that is needing to happen.

>> But I think the point is, no one will continuously be up-to-date. No one will be upskilled. We're in a world now where you have to run as fast as you can to keep up, but in the past you used to run fast, catch up, stop, and then you relaxed for a while, then you run. You can't do that. There's no such thing now as I think transformation, because transformation suggests a beginning and an end. It's not transformation. You're going to have to keep running and you're always going to have to keep running fast, and you're always going to be playing catch up. And if you're not running fast and you think you're upskilled, you've missed it.

Savannah Peterson

>> I think that's actually a really bold claim. I like that. That it's the end of transformation. That's actually a pretty hot take. Last question for you, and we'll wrap this up, when we are hanging out at Google Cloud Next in 2026, what do you hope to be able to say then that you can't yet say today?

>> I'll have to think about that.

>> Oh, I'll go.

>> I'm going to let you go first.

>> So a year ago, our team talked to you about tax control engine, how we were running a data platform tax controls.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes, we talked about .

Savannah Peterson

>> You might have noticed, we've renamed it data control engine, right? Because data is data. We're not just using it in tax. We're using it across finance, reg, legal. I want that running. But also, still, of course throughout those processes, there's still quite a lot of manual intervention. In six months' time, there won't be. So I think when we're talking to you next year, we're going to talk about how Agentic AI is fully built into that platform. And when I'm saying we're saving clients, 30, 40, 50% of the time, that number will go up.

Savannah Peterson

>> Awesome.

Dave Vellante

>> I think something similar to that, I think if we think about it, maybe not 2026, maybe 2027, at some point in the very near future, though-

>> We're coming back twice now.

>> I'm here every year.

Savannah Peterson

>> I see what you did there. I see what you did.

>> I think we've talked a little bit about the process. When you start looking at the team and who's actually executing on tax, it would be really interesting to see at that point that it is a couple of individuals, a team of agents that are executing upon that and the analytics and value that are being driven off of that. How is that actually changing capital investments, what companies are actually doing and driving more value in that way as opposed to having more conversations around data wrangling, which we have had for decades. Decades.

>> And that's a game changer. You can now do something, you can deal with it almost instantly, and it's fundamentally ridiculously low cost and fast compared to what we thought could be achieved two years ago. Right?

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. I love it. Well-

Dave Vellante

>> Sounds like a jaunt for Dan Priest. Get him on it.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sounds like some internal co-lab going on here. Wow. Well, this was exciting as always. Love you all bringing this lens to the technology world and really can't wait to see what happens next year now that we've had this chat. Jonathan, Tiffany, this was awesome and thank you Dave, always-

Dave Vellante

>> Of course.

Savannah Peterson

>> Always keeping it interesting. And thank all of you for tuning in. We're here in Las Vegas, Nevada, day two of Google Cloud Next. My name is Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.