It appears AI skills have moved from a “nice to have” to a basic standard for accounting and finance pros.

New research from academic and corporate sources alike highlights how deep AI expectations run in CFO circles.

Financial platform Datarails found that 31% of finance job postings now call out AI or machine-learning skills, up from 25% a year ago. The analysis of 5,000 US job postings between January 2025 and January 2026 also found that 27% of CFO job listings in January 2026 required “AI familiarity,” unchanged from a year earlier. The biggest jump came in postings for accounting roles, where AI mentions increased to 30% from just 18% the previous year.

“The finance professionals who will thrive are those who combine AI fluency with strategic thinking and the ability to tell a compelling story with data,” Didi Gurfinkel, CEO of Datarails, said in a news release.

Keep reading.—AZ

The IRS is falling down on the job, at least when it comes to large partnerships.

That’s according to a March 18 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), pointedly titled “The IRS Has Yet to Develop a Successful Strategy for Examining Large Partnership Returns.” In tax year (TY) 2023, the IRS examined less than 0.1% of returns filed by partnerships with assets over $10 million, TIGTA said. That’s down from 2.7% in TY 2011.

That’s a concern, because the number of large partnerships has more than doubled in the past 15 years. In TY 2011, 140,577 large partnerships filed with the IRS; in TY 2023, 334,686 did. Improved oversight of returns could help shrink the “tax gap,” or the difference between taxes owed and collected. In TY 2022, partnerships and entities like estates and trusts were responsible for an estimated $42 billion of the $696 billion US tax gap.

Too “soft” on partnerships? TIGTA studied some of the IRS’s recent efforts to review large partnership returns, and found them lacking. In October 2023, for instance, the agency’s Soft Letter Campaign alerted partnerships to amend discrepancies on their returns voluntarily. It sent Letter 6585 to 483 partnerships notifying them of discrepancies, but they weren’t required to respond. Two-thirds (66%) of the partnerships responded and one-third (34%) did not. The IRS accepted 43% of the responses.

Keep reading.—CV

We are so back?

After a dour jobs report in February, March delivered surprisingly strong gains for the US labor market, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest employment situation report. In fact, March’s job growth marked the highest monthly gains so far for President Trump’s second administration.

However, looking beyond top-line payroll gains, something concerning is brewing within the economy, as people out of work gradually exit the labor market. That could be worrying for employers down the line, should job gains persist, one expert said.

Diving into the data. Employers added 178,000 jobs in March, beating economists’ expectations of 60,000. Healthcare, recovering from strikes earlier this winter, led in job growth by industry, adding 76,000 jobs. That was followed by construction, which added 26,00 jobs, and transportation and warehousing, which added 21,000.

Keep reading on HR Brew.—PM

AI sounds great in theory. Finance needs it to work in practice. On April 22, learn how teams are cutting through the noise, prioritizing real use cases, and turning AI into measurable impact—not just another slide in the deck.