In a feature introducing Extinction of Tax As We Know It, International Tax Review highlighted Nitin Agarwal’s unconventional approach to thought leadership — using business fiction to explore one of the profession’s most urgent questions: how tax should adapt to technology-led change.

Written by Tom Baker, the feature noted that while much of the profession relies on conferences, webinars, and white papers, Agarwal chose storytelling as a more effective way to translate complex transformation challenges into something leaders can recognise, debate, and learn from.

The novel dramatises the tax and finance transformation of a Fortune 500 multinational, AlphaCorp, unfolding across three acts — from inherited compliance fragility, through conflict-driven transformation, to high-stakes failure and recovery. Through its characters, the book examines leadership, data governance, automation risk, and the human consequences of poorly executed technology programmes.

A key theme highlighted in the feature is Agarwal’s belief that technology is essential, but not sufficient. While acknowledging the growing role of automation and digital reporting, he challenges the assumption that artificial intelligence is an immediate solution for tax, arguing instead that the profession must first resolve deeper issues of context, capability, and operating models.

The article also underscored the book’s broad intended audience — spanning in-house tax professionals, CFOs, advisers, tax technologists, and students — positioning it as both a narrative mirror of modern tax functions and a practical lens on the future of the profession.

Extinction of Tax As We Know It is presented not as a prediction of obsolescence, but as an invitation to rethink how tax leaders, teams, and systems evolve in a world of accelerating regulatory and technological change.