Robots, Unemployment and Tax Reform: The Discussion and Debate We Need From Congress and The President

It's been just over 30 years since the last major overall of the U.S. tax code. In that time the world has been transformed - the Soviet Union collapsed, the Berlin Wall fell, dot coms boomed and busted, terrorism struck and launched the U.S. into the longest war in its history. A financial crisis shook the country and the world to its knees, and the rise of big data, artificial intelligence, genomics, new materials, cloud computing, blockchain, the sharing and gig economies, and many other new, advanced technologies and business models signaled the start of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In that time, tax law and accounting practices have struggled to keep pace with innovations, sometimes leading to a wild West free for all for businesses and consumers, some of who managed to profit while others lost or were swindled of their life savings. Even today tax laws still fail to address the issues that the Age of Computer and the Internet brought, such as the internet sales tax, which may be heading to the US Supreme Court in the next year or so. As President Trump and the U.S. Congress are poised to pass and celebrate the passage of reforming the U.S. tax code for the first time in 30 years, missing from the discussion by both parties is how tax law and accounting principles should be altered to account for the realities of how AI, automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution are reshaping businesses and the labor markets today and will continue to transform them in the years to come.