With tariffs and regulations accelerating, companies are turning to intelligent classification and ESG-aligned supplier data to stay ahead.
Highlights
- CoCounsel Tax transforms junior tax staff into independent analysts handling complex scenarios.
- Research time reduced from 2 hours to 30 minutes with 75-85% efficiency gains.
- Under-resourced departments spend 44% of budgets on external support versus 37% for resourced teams.
Fresh talent enters corporate tax departments eager to contribute but often gets stuck in manual research loops, spending hours on routine questions that could be resolved quickly. The numbers tell the story: According to the 2025 State of the Corporate Tax Department, 58% of tax departments are under-resourced, with 61% of their work spent on tactical tasks rather than strategic initiatives.
When junior staff can’t find answers independently, departments either absorb the time cost of senior review or incur external advisor fees for routine matters. Thomson Reuters CoCounsel Tax transforms this dynamic, converting junior colleagues from research assistants into capable analysts who can handle complex scenarios independently.
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The traditional junior tax staff experience
How CoCounsel Tax changes the game for junior tax staff
Strategic benefits for tax departments
Real-world application scenarios
Next steps for tax department leaders
The traditional junior tax staff experience
Traditional tax research tools require senior-level interpretation skills to apply findings to specific company situations. This creates a predictable cycle: junior staff identifies a tax question, spends hours in traditional research tools finding general guidance, but still can’t apply findings to the company’s specific facts. At that point, senior staff either steps in (time cost) or the department engages external advisors (financial cost).
The data reveals the impact of this dynamic. Under-resourced departments spend 44% of their budget on external tax support compared to 37% for fully resourced departments. Junior tax professionals often lack confidence to provide definitive guidance, leading to over-reliance on external validation.
Documentation requirements have grown in volume and sophistication, while customs authorities conduct more frequent inspections. As one trade professional noted: “Project schedules are impacted by the complexity and delays in regulatory compliance and customs clearance.”
At the foundation of effective due diligence lies accurate product classification – a process that has traditionally consumed significant resources while remaining error-prone and inefficient. Classification teams often rely on manual processes, making their work vulnerable to errors that cascade throughout supply chain operations. With thousands of codes, complex descriptions, and millions of annual modifications to global tariff databases, the complexity overwhelms traditional approaches.
How CoCounsel Tax changes the game for junior tax staff
Unlike traditional tools that provide general guidance, CoCounsel Tax applies Checkpoint’s expert content to your specific company documents and scenarios. The workflow transformation is significant:
- Upload company partnership agreements, contracts, or transaction documents
- Ask specific questions about tax implications for your situation
- Receive analysis that applies tax law directly to your facts
- Get audit-ready documentation with full citations
From our CoCounsel Tax webinar, one professional shared: “The ability to ask CoCounsel Tax to apply tax law and regulations to specific fact patterns I provide has been the most surprising ability I’ve found.”
Junior tax staff can now handle complex scenarios that previously required senior review or external consultation. Research that previously took 2 hours now gets completed in 30 minutes, based on customer zero proof points from CoCounsel Tax implementation. Built on Checkpoint’s expert-authored content, the platform ensures junior tax staff work with authoritative guidance while maintaining enterprise-level security.
Strategic benefits for tax departments
Optimizing advisory relationships: Junior staff come to advisor meetings prepared with comprehensive background analysis, maximizing the value of external expertise. This approach builds internal capability while ensuring advisory time focuses on strategic guidance and complex judgment calls.
Scalable expertise: 75-85% time savings have been validated by Thomson Reuters tax professionals using CoCounsel Tax. This efficiency gain addresses a critical need – tax professionals want to spend 70% of their time on proactive work versus the current 46%.
Building tomorrow’s senior talent: Junior colleagues gain confidence and capability faster when they can independently research and apply complex tax guidance. This accelerated development helps address the talent pipeline challenges facing most departments.
Compliance confidence: Only 26% of under-resourced departments are very likely to provide timely and accurate forecasting, versus 43% of adequately resourced departments, according to the report. CoCounsel Tax helps level this capability gap.
Organizations implementing new technologies report that 57% include GenAI and 36% reference machine learning. CoCounsel Tax represents the practical application of this technology shift, delivering measurable results rather than experimental initiatives.
Real-world application scenarios
Partnership agreement analysis: A junior colleague uploads a 150-page partnership agreement, asks about Section 754 election implications, and receives specific guidance for their entity structure.
State tax compliance: Using CoCounsel Tax templates to research multi-state tax implications for specific business transactions, ensuring consistent methodology across different jurisdictions.
Transfer pricing documentation: Analyzing intercompany agreements and extracting relevant details for transfer pricing studies, building internal expertise for advisory conversations.
Tax provision support: Researching complex accounting methods and their tax implications for quarterly provisions, enabling more accurate forecasting.
M&A due diligence: Quickly analyzing target company tax attributes and potential issues, allowing junior staff to contribute meaningfully to transaction teams.
International tax planning: Understanding treaty benefits and foreign tax credit implications for specific cross-border transactions, building global tax competency.
Next steps for tax department leaders
Immediate value: Transform your junior tax talent from researchers into analysts who can handle complex scenarios independently while building internal capability that complements external expertise.
Strategic positioning: Build internal perspective before seeking external validation. Come better prepared for advisor conversations. Free advisors to focus on strategic guidance and complex judgment calls.
Learn more: Watch our on-demand webcast “CoCounsel Tax – Beyond Research” to see specific workflow demonstrations and understand how leading tax teams are scaling expertise across their organizations.
Contact: Schedule a personalized demo to see how CoCounsel Tax applies to your department’s specific challenges and junior colleague development needs.
