Ascoria’s Tim Cole discusses how technology is shaking up the taxation and compliance industry, and why he’s excited about agentic AI.
Tim Cole is the chief information officer (CIO) at Ascoria, a Dublin-based company that has developed an AI-enabled digital taxation platform.
Prior to joining Ascoria last June, Cole worked in entrepreneurship, founding and scaling various businesses, as well as in IT project management. Over the years, he has led complex projects that integrated advanced information systems across diverse industries in both the public and private sectors.
In his current role as CIO, he works to ensure that Ascoria’s IT systems are future-ready, with his duties including streamlining system performance, enhancing cybersecurity measures and fostering collaboration across teams to align technology with business goals.
“I orchestrate our internal tech ecosystem to enable our tax technology experts,” says Cole. “My focus is translating the needs of the business into technical infrastructure that lets our specialists decode global digital services tax regulations and empower governments.”
Tim Cole. Image: Ascoria
What are some of the biggest challenges you’re facing in the current IT landscape and how are you addressing them?
The combination of legacy customer systems and regulatory frameworks currently pose the biggest challenges to us. Fortunately, our product offers a solution which enables governments to navigate these obstacles effectively. We also bring the expertise and proven experience needed to back it up, ensuring success where others often struggle.
What are your thoughts on digital transformation in a broad sense within your industry? How are you addressing it in your company?
Digital transformation is fundamentally rewiring the taxation and compliance industry. It’s shifting us from static, paper-based systems to a dynamic, data-driven ecosystem where real-time information flows dictate everything – from revenue collection to enforcement.
Governments and tax authorities aren’t just digitising old workflows; they’re rethinking their role in a globalised, digital economy with instantaneous cross-border transactions and intangible assets like data or IP generate value untethered from physical presence.
This is sparking a race to harness technologies – cloud computing, AI, even blockchain – to close tax gaps, boost transparency and meet public demands for fairness, all while grappling with the sheer volume and velocity of digital activity. It’s less about reacting and more about redefining how fiscal systems function in a world where traditional rules barely apply.
The perception of tax authorities currently may be that they are late adopters, however that is changing fast. Tax authorities worldwide are looking to leverage the power of information technology in new and efficient ways (think e-invoicing for VAT purposes etc). For our part we are reimagining compliance as a continuous health scan rather than a periodic check-up.
Our tools and dashboards give actionable insights for tax authorities at a time when digital economy taxation becomes more and more of a material concern, making sure large companies pay their fair share to countries where they have enjoyed activity in the digital world.
Sustainability has become a key objective for businesses in recent years. What are your thoughts on how this can be addressed from an IT perspective?
Sustainability is a non-negotiable priority for businesses today, and IT is at the heart of making it real. As a small Irish business with a global footprint (we have sales efforts on the ground in 31 countries currently) managing our planetary impact is front of mind. From an IT perspective, it’s about more than just efficiency – it’s about rethinking how tech powers a global business responsibly.
We’ve leaned hard into a remote-first model, supported by IT tools like virtual collaboration platforms that limit our travel emissions – travel’s now only for must-do moments.
On the technical side, we’re working with researchers to explore a shift from energy-hungry AI hardware to low-power alternatives, cutting our compute footprint. But it’s not just hardware – we’re also optimising our software for leaner performance. Across the industry, tech’s carbon footprint is under fire and we see IT as the lever to flip that script.
What big tech trends do you believe are changing the world and your industry specifically?
I’m particularly excited about the potential for agentic AI to change knowledge work at a fundamental level. Agentic AI systems don’t just augment individual tasks, they are creating entirely new ways of distributing ‘thought’ labour across human/machine teams. In regulation-dense environments like ours, they will become essential navigators of complexity that was previously unmanageable without massive resources of time and personnel. Our human resource of experts is then free to create new impact in ways that would not be possible without an agentic AI collaborative approach.
What are your thoughts on how we can address the security challenges currently facing your industry?
Security challenges in our industry are intensifying – tax data is a prime target for ransomware and state-sponsored hacks, especially as the digital economy explodes and regulations like GDPR tighten the screws on sovereignty and governance. Our approach blends traditional hardening and zero-trust architecture with a culture that treats security as a business enabler, not a roadblock.
A well thought-out security approach with productivity in mind allows for a flexible and scalable organisation while retaining our clients’ trust around data governance, sovereignty and security.
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