While tax season often involves juggling client expectations, a multitude of documents, and compliance issues, it can also be an opportunity to boost revenue and cement client trust.
For firms that rely on manual processes and outdated tools, tax season can be chaotic. Artificial intelligence tools that directly address the time and stress manual processes and outdated platforms can cause, can also be in place to help increase revenue, improve client satisfaction, and strengthen compliance.
Even now, the firms that want to be future-ready are not shying away from adopting AI-powered tools and implementing AI-based workflows. As a result, AI adoption has accelerated sharply, rising from 9% in 2024 to 41% in 2025, according to Wolters Kluwer’s 2025 Future Ready Accountant report.
Let’s discuss why adopting AI is a must to help ensure a successful tax season.
Streamlining client communication
One of the most crucial components during tax season is client communication. You need to work in tandem with the clients to ensure proper document submissions and compliance with the deadlines. Moreover, it is the responsibility of CPAs and tax preparers to keep clients updated with every development.
AI technologies, such as agentic AI, can help in streamlining client interactions. AI agents are capable of context-driven responses that are similar to human interactions. They can remind clients of submitting documents and upcoming deadlines and update them on the progress. AI helps translate complex tax terms into client-friendly language, reducing confusion and callbacks.
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Automating workload management
Another must is working with AI tools that can automate workload management during tax season by intelligently prioritizing tasks based on deadlines, complexity, and risk while balancing work across teams according to capacity and skill sets. It provides real-time visibility into progress, flags delays or bottlenecks early, and helps prevent last-minute fire drills.
Moreover, once an employee accomplishes the task, AI systems automatically send notifications to the assigned reviewer. They can also send reminders to employees of missing deadlines. By automating task assignments, AI enables managers to save time and focus on client service.
“I heard a really good use case for an agent, and I thought that was like, oh, well, that’s pretty smart. So, IRS notices, everybody hates IRS notices, right? Like, but I heard of a use case where a firm, a top 400 firm, built an agent that responds to IRS notices.” – Jody Padar on What It Takes to Build a Future-Ready Firm.
Ensuring compliance
AI tools today can help in risk and compliance management by continuously monitoring regulatory changes and updating algorithms accordingly. In contrast to rule-based workflows, AI workflows offer context-based analysis, which is useful for identifying errors and fraud.
For instance, AI can distinguish between a legitimate business expense and a personal one based on the user’s spending patterns and past data. Moreover, AI can check data entries against current tax codes and cross-reference financial patterns.
Facilitating intelligent document management
Tedious document management during tax season means delays, errors, and miscommunication. However, mismanagement becomes inevitable when handling heaps of documents manually.
AI tools enhance document management by automating the classification of forms and receipts. These are then segregated and routed to the relevant folders. Moreover, they index documents for easier retrieval. Hence, instead of searching folders and emails, accountants can find their W-2s and 1099s by simple prompts and keywords.
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Aiding tax planning
Preparations for tax filing start well before the tax season. AI enables accounting firms to be ready for the tax season by generating deep data insights and forecasts.
For instance, AI can identify patterns in income, deductions, and expenses by analyzing tax data from previous years. Moreover, these systems can identify tax-saving opportunities, enabling you to help in clients’ decision-making. AI tools also track changes in tax laws and generate insights on how they can benefit the client.
Smart document processing
During tax season, accountants need to deal with several documents, be it W-2s, expense receipts, 1099s, or bank statements. Moreover, these documents can originate from multiple sources and in different formats. Consequently, accountants need to spend hours consolidating data for filing. It results in frequent errors or missed details.
AI-powered intelligent document processing (IDP) tools automatically extract, classify, and validate data, preventing manual errors and delays. Along with OCR (optical character recognition) and AI workflows, data is extracted from bills and receipts and populated in the accounting software.
Moreover, AI tools can classify all documents in real time and set their priority based on importance. AI systems are also capable of identifying missing pages, inconsistencies, or unusual values for human review before returns are finalized.
Final thoughts
With AI, accounting firms can navigate through the tax season free of stress, errors, and complications. Moreover, it helps firms deliver exceptional client service and enhances their reputation.
However, AI is not just a tool for surviving tax season. As part of a broader technology stack alongside data and cloud, it supports long-term growth by improving productivity, reducing operational costs, and future-proofing the firm. For accounting firms looking to succeed in the competitive market, AI is a necessity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Sangeeta Chhabra, co-founder and executive director of Ace Cloud Hosting, is a leader and innovative entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in the IT sector. She has positioned the company as a leading global provider of IT and managed cloud services, celebrated for its QuickBooks hosting tailored for the accounting sector, managed security services, Desktop as a Service, and public cloud offerings for SMBs and enterprises. Under her leadership, Ace Cloud Hosting was honored as the Best Outsourced Technology Provider at the CPA Practice Advisor Readers’ Choice Awards 2023, among other accolades. Beyond her professional successes, Dr. Chhabra is a passionate advocate for women’s empowerment and is committed to fostering an inclusive environment at Ace Cloud Hosting.
Photo credit: Tomwang112/iStock
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