Putting the AI into tax organizers

The tax profession is experiencing a revolution:.

•  Tax law is becoming more complex.
•  A generation of experienced professionals is retiring with fewer young professionals to take their place.
•  Preparing simple 1040’s is becoming secondary next to planning and advisory.
•  And more than anything, AI is changing the game.

We have been hearing how AI will change or eliminate the tax and accounting profession since the emergence of the first ChatGPT model, but most accountants might think this has been an overblown sentiment so far.

Is it really? We may have the first fully functional, widely adopted use case for AI to make a real impact in accounting: Using AI for the tax organizer.

The time is right for AI

We all know the limitations of dealing in paper in the speed of the modern world. Yet, not long ago, a tax organizer was paper … yes, paper, a packet that contained a questionnaire for clients to complete by hand and deliver or mail back with the original copies of their W-2s, 1099s, and other tax documents needed to prepare their return.

The paper organizer gave way to electronic organizers where clients could complete the questionnaire on a computer and upload documents via a portal. Still, this was typically very poor for the client to navigate. Clunky interfaces, confusing terminology, and sorting through endless questions that don’t apply to them did not make the early electronic organizer popular.

My firm, Flux Accounting, decided that we did not want to subject clients to an experience that felt bloated and clunky. We started the firm in 2018 as a mostly paperless firm, so paper was off the table, and we wanted to avoid having clients answer questions that did not apply to them.

So, we built our own tax organizer using an online form service with conditional logic as a way to personalize our questionnaire. It was not perfect, but we could hide unnecessary fields based on a client’s answers. It was also sleek, clean to the eye, and could be embedded into our client portal.

The benefit of building our own organizer was that we could control the client experience and adjust the questionnaire based on client feedback. The downside was that we had to maintain the questionnaire from a technical perspective and update it manually with new tax law changes. This turned out to be quite cumbersome.

AI is doing the heavy lifting

Fast forward to 2025, where AI-based tax organizers are maturing like fine wine. The concept has always been the same all the way back to paper organizers: a questionnaire for taxpayer information paired with a document collection process. The difference now is that AI is capable of taking the taxpayer’s data from the prior year and personalizing the experience for the client to submit this information. 

Here are four features that really revolutionize the collection process:

1. Use of prior year data to personalize the client questionnaire and document list. For returning clients, the organizer will request information and a list of documents that matches what they submitted last year. With new clients, we upload last year’s tax return; AI reads it and generates a customized questionnaire and document collection list. Most organizers will ask prompting questions in case anything changes year to year.
2. AI will analyze the documents collected, check for discrepancies such as a W-2 from the wrong tax year, and check off the document list appropriately. This feature is still being perfected, but it significantly cuts down the hours needed to organize documents.
3. The platform will follow up with clients for any missing information. If a mandatory question was not answered, AI will remind the client to come back to it. If a document is missing, it will remind the client to upload the document.
4. Once completed, a tax workpaper is generated automatically for review and input into the tax software.

The results

At Flux Accounting, we migrated to an AI tax organizer, Soraban, and are very excited about the results. The platform follows up promptly with clients, which cuts down the time between their first interaction with our tax engagement and any follow up. Clients get immediate responses  and consistent reminders that give them the feeling they are an immediate priority. The process also allows our staff to focus on actual tax preparation tasks rather than chasing down clients.

One of the unanticipated results is that our client relationships have improved. Clients now perceive our staff more as experts than as paper chasers. AI follows up on our behalf so the client first interacts with a staff member on higher-level touch points. This makes it easier to maintain rapport, and avoid resentment between staff and clients. This healthier rapport paired with considerable time savings for our staff makes an AI tax organizer a revolutionary product.

The next phase of development for tax and AI will be to take the data from the tax organizer and input it into a tax preparation platform such as Intuit® ProConnect™ Tax. This feature set is live for some organizers, but is becoming less attractive to tax pros compared to planning and advisory. The human element will then be spent on review and complexity, not data entry.

Beyond tax preparation, AI has been implemented in tax planning platforms and processes, but that is a heavy lift for our AI friends. It can scan tax returns and identify planning opportunities, but there are still limits to how effective that is to the client in real life. Tax planning requires a knowledge of more variables than the AI has access to, and doe not account for human psychology or complex topics, such as how ERISA rules may limit how effective a retirement plan can be for the owners of a business.

For all the hype around AI in accounting, tax intake/preparation seems to be the first category to have fully functional solutions that will change the landscape of the profession. The tax organizer is where it all starts. At Flux Accounting, we will stay intently tuned to what is next.

Editor’s note: Intuit ProConnect Tax streamlines your preparation workflow, starting with personalized Client Organizers built from last year’s data and sent via the Intuit Link client portal. Once clients upload documents, the Ready for Review feature (coming soon!) takes over, providing a dynamic checklist to track document types and import status. With a single click, you can import multiple documents directly into the return, significantly accelerating your tax process.

Learn more about ProConnect Tax.