Legacy Tax Research Tools Have a User Experience Problem

It happens all the time. A client is impatiently waiting for you to respond to that “quick question” they had, and your tax research tool feels like it’s working against you. Trying to craft the perfect Boolean search, digging through lengthy source lists, and manually piecing together key points to arrive at an answer—it’s not exactly the most efficient approach. 

So it should come as no surprise that efficiency tops the list of complaints tax practitioners have about legacy tax research tools. And maybe even less of a surprise that these tools have notably lower adoption rates than their AI-powered counterparts. 

In this article, we’ll explore exactly what’s behind these poor user experiences, the risks of staff turning to non-tax-specific tools instead, and how AI-powered tax research can solve both of these problems.

The Top Complaints of Legacy Tool Users 

To understand why tax practitioners don’t want to use the legacy research tools they’re paying for, you need to understand what it’s like to use those tools. Blue J’s AI Tax Research Solution Outlook report found that the top four complaints about legacy tools are: too time-consuming (42%), too expensive (42%), difficult to navigate (37%), and lacking functionality (27%). Notably, three of these top four complaints relate back to the user experience.

User Experience Complaint #1: Too time-consuming

Accountants are used to dealing with tight timelines. After all, they don’t call it “busy season” for nothing. But in the last few years, things have been getting even busier. There are a few factors contributing to the time crunch, including: 

• Digital communication and real-time updates mean clients now expect answers in hours, not days. 
• The number of students graduating with a bachelor’s or master’s degree in accounting continues to decline, so more work is falling on fewer team members. 

Across many advanced economies, tax law is becoming increasingly complex. In the US, federal regulations have doubled in length since the late 1970s, now running beyond 190,000 pages.

Inefficient legacy tools amplify the pressure of every deadline 

When time is already tight, the last thing you need is your tax research tool slowing you down. Yet legacy tools do exactly that, forcing users into a daily grind of inefficient searches, sourcing, and stitching together answers. All this comes together to create bottlenecks, intensify delays, and distract teams from higher-value client work.

Contrast this with AI-powered tax research tools, which are designed to be intuitive. When users can ask their tax questions conversationally, getting to a comprehensive answer becomes as fast and easy as consulting a colleague.

93% of tax practitioners surveyed say Blue J saves them time—saving 2.94 hours/week on average ~ Blue J User Survey

User Experience Complaint #2: Difficult to navigate

From social media to smartphones, the tech tax practitioners use in their everyday lives is designed for maximum ease of use. So when they have to log in to clunky legacy research tools at work, making that transition can be tough. 

Naturally, this leads some to seek out shortcuts. These intuitive—but non-tax-specific—alternatives present as much risk as they do convenience. 

Search engines will surface SEO optimized articles first, even if they deliver outdated or inaccurate information. General-purpose AI tools lack tax-specific expertise and can be prone to hallucinations. They also introduce questions around client security and privacy.

Tax practitioners choosing ease of use over authority in their research is far from rare. According to Blue J’s Outlook Report, 81.3% are regularly turning to search engines for tax research.

User Experience Complaint #3: Lack of functionality

Aside from having features that don’t work the way users want them to, many legacy tools lack some key features altogether.

Because these legacy tax research tools often come from companies with massive product suites, they can only devote so much energy to any one of these products. This means the speed at which they can evolve their product roadmap, release new features, and respond to user feedback is limited. 

Even when they do release features users have been asking for, those features aren’t always up to snuff. When legacy tools incorporated AI add-ons to their research solutions, many of those add-ons only delivered simple source summaries—rather than the comprehensive answers their users were hoping for.

Non-Experience Complaint: Too expensive

While the cost of these legacy tools isn’t exactly an experience complaint, it still bears mentioning. 

Across accounting firms of all sizes, tech spend is up. But that spend isn’t always being put to good use. In Blue J’s Tax Research Outlook Report, respondents reported having access to an average of three tax research solutions, yet only used two of those three solutions on a regular basis.

So why are firms paying for solutions they don’t use? Part of the problem comes down to being overwhelmed by too many choices. According to the Firm of the Future report, 66% of accountants feel overwhelmed at least weekly by the complexity of their tech stack. 

The other part of the problem is those user experience issues mentioned throughout the rest of this blog. When you consider that the true cost of a solution isn’t just the total amount paid for license fees, but also the actual cost per active user, poor adoption caused by a poor user experience only makes the price of these tools more painful. 

A Whole New Way to Experience Tax Research

So what are tax practitioners to do when they’re not happy with the experience delivered by the tools they’ve trusted for years? For many of them, turning to search engines or general-purpose AI tools has been their solution. But doing so comes with risk. 

AI-powered tax research tools provide a solution to these experience issues, without sacrificing answer quality. By blending advanced AI technology with trusted tax sources, these tools generate comprehensive, reliable tax answers—faster, more easily, and more intuitively than their legacy counterparts. Plus, since most of these tools adhere to the same security standards (or higher) as legacy tools, client privacy and security are assured.

Ready to explore how AI-powered tax research can transform tax research in your firm? Book a demo of Blue J with one of our experts today.