The shoebox full of receipts is dead. Long live the agentic data extraction engine.
As tax season draws to a close, many tax professionals this busy season used artificial intelligence to realize some major improvements in the preparation process. From spotting anomalies to enhancing accuracy to streamlining client communication, preparers are no longer being bogged down by operational inefficiencies and instead, doing better, more accurate work, all while avoiding the April burnout. It's been a long time in the making. For years, tax and accounting professionals have thought about these benefits in the abstract, but now, change is here and it's good.
Tax workflows get supercharged
It wasn't uncommon for tax professionals to go completely underground in the weeks before deadline day, as their workflows were swallowed up by banal, repetitive tasks. But this year, there aren't quite as many late nights and working weekends. That's because AI solutions, like Thomson Reuters CoCounsel Tax & Audit, have begun to allow tax pros to streamline communication with their clients, make document gathering and e-signatures easier, and automate tax payments, invoicing and tax return delivery.
Take, for example, the scene at Minnesota-based Copeland Buhl. The firm has trained and licensed 67 professionals to work with professional-grade AI software and it has sparked immediate improvements. AI-driven research is now fully integrated into daily tax workflows, yielding benefits in time savings and improved responsiveness to clients. In one instance, their AI tool surfaced a critical Minnesota tax issue months before the firm would have otherwise discovered it — prompting state-level dialogue and new Department of Revenue guidance.
Before AI, staff could spend hours chasing irrelevant sources, going down unproductive research paths, and asking senior colleagues for help. Allison Stevens, a tax partner at Copeland Buhl, described "quick questions" that never really were quick — often requiring long, manual digging through keyword searches, state charts and other primary sources.
"One staff member has had 35 conversations with our AI platform this month already, so that's 35 conversations she didn't have to interrupt somebody else for," said Stevens. "That allows people to focus on doing their own work and moving projects along."
And moving along they are. Research memos drafted or pre-reviewed by AI are saving Copeland Buhl's reviewers 15 to 30 minutes per memo. That has allowed preparers to improve their accuracy, while bolstering client relationships by having better, more personalized responses.
Complexities melt away
When the workload gets complex, that's where AI really shines. For Arizona-based Jansen & Co. CPAs, their core business is in preparing and reviewing not only individual returns, but trust and estate tax returns as well. As the firm takes on increasingly intricate cases for clients with technical tax issues — corporate conversions, multistate rentals, trust planning, inheritance rules and international partner allocations — these scenarios often require deep, structured research and nuanced interpretation. Without the right tools, research can be slow and prone to dead ends.
But since their AI integration, those dead ends are not the roadblock they once were, senior tax managing director Matthew Hauger explained: "I used to spend an hour-and-a-half on an article and realize it wasn't what I needed. It saves us time. But not just time — there's an accuracy and a confidence element there."
Hauger added that his firm's clients expect timely, accurate guidance, but some issues were so complex that fully validating them would previously require hours that the team didn't always have. Just a few examples of these requests: helping clients convert an improperly structured passive rental C corp, an IRS challenge around solar energy credits, and tax planning for a partner residing abroad in Greece.
Now, Hauger can avoid wasted research time, instead using AI tools to validate these complex issues instead of relying on assumptions or legacy practices. Having structured, source-linked research has also changed the way he communicates with clients. He can explain tax concepts more clearly and document recommendations with greater assurance — something his clients value.
"It's probably the most exciting thing I've had to use since I got into this line of work a decade ago," said Hauger.
As preparers start to see what a more thoughtful, focused, hyper-efficient tax season looks like, there's simply no going back in time. AI-driven workflows are not just a competitive advantage, they're a necessity in a landscape of quick pivots and complex nuances. The anecdotes I'm hearing and the results we're seeing all point in one direction: a complete remaking of the tax preparation industry, powered by fiduciary-grade AI technology.
