AI Workflows / Field note

Clients Are Doing Their Taxes With AI and Nobody Is Checking the Work. That Gap Is the CPA's New Product

Taxpayers are increasingly running returns through general AI tools, and practitioners warn the output often goes unchecked. For CPAs, the verification step is an opportunity, not a threat. Here is one way to frame it.

By Anthony Guerriero · Reviewed by The Leveraged Years Editorial Desk · Published June 28, 2026 · Last updated June 28, 2026

Clients Are Doing Their Taxes With AI and Nobody Is Checking the Work. That Gap Is the CPA's New Product

The Leveraged Years AI Workflows

First Look

What Changed: Practitioners are increasingly seeing clients use general AI tools to prepare returns, and as CPA Practice Advisor warned on June 9, 2026, "nobody is checking the work." The concern is that confident AI output can reach a return without a professional review step.
What It Means: The commodity part of tax prep is being automated by tools clients already have. The scarce, valuable part, verifying that the answer is right and defensible, is exactly what a CPA does and an AI does not.
Who This Helps: CPAs, tax practitioners, and accounting firm owners deciding how to position against free AI tools instead of competing with them on speed.
How To Use It: One response framework is to position around verification and accountability rather than data entry, offering a review service that catches AI tax errors, so the firm sells judgment rather than keystrokes.
The Catch: A CPA who uses AI the same careless way the client did inherits the same exposure. Circular 230 duties of competence and diligence do not relax because a model drafted the return.
Bottom Line: AI did not remove the CPA from the tax return. It removed the parts of the job that were never the value, and put a spotlight on the part that always was.
Last Verified: June 28, 2026

The work moved, the value did not

A quiet shift ran through tax season. Clients who used to hand a CPA a shoebox of documents are now handing some of that work to a general AI tool first, and sometimes filing what it produces. As CPA Practice Advisor observed on June 9, 2026, this is the part of the AI-in-tax conversation the profession has largely missed: "people are using AI to do their taxes, and nobody is checking the work." The tools are confident. They can also go wrong on the parts of the code that matter, with no signal to the user that anything is off.

For a CPA, the instinct is to read that as a threat. It is the opposite. It is the clearest description in years of what a CPA actually sells.

What AI is good at, and where it breaks

General AI tools are genuinely useful at the commodity layer of tax work. They can organize documents, explain a concept in plain language, summarize a form, and produce a plausible first pass at a simple return. That is real, and clients will keep using them for it.

Where they break is exactly where the money and the risk live. A model does not know the client's full situation unless every detail was entered correctly. It will state a deduction with total confidence and no awareness that the client does not qualify. It does not track the difference between last year's rules and this year's. And it has no stake in whether the return survives an examination. The output reads finished. It is not verified. The gap between those two states is where penalties, amended returns, and exposure live.

The service hiding in the gap

The opportunity is to lean into the layer AI cannot touch rather than the layer it commoditized. Consider packaging the verification.

Name it. A defined review service, where the client brings the AI-prepared return and the CPA does what the AI could not: confirms the facts, checks the positions against current law, finds the deductions the model missed and the ones it wrongly claimed, and signs off as a professional who is accountable for the result. The client is not paying for the typing. They are paying for the sentence "this is correct and I stand behind it," which no AI can say.

This reframes the entire competitive picture. A firm that competes with free AI tools on speed and price loses. A firm that positions as the verification and accountability layer on top of those tools wins, because it is selling the one thing demand is rising for precisely as AI use rises.

Use AI without inheriting the client's mistake

There is a trap on the practitioner side. A CPA who runs the client's return through AI and signs it with the same lack of scrutiny has simply moved the unchecked work behind a credential. That is worse, not better, because now a professional is accountable for it. Circular 230 does not address AI specifically, but its duties of competence and diligence apply to the whole return regardless of what drafted it. Using AI to go faster is fine. Using it to skip the review is the exact failure the service is supposed to sell against.

The disciplined version is simple. Let AI accelerate the commodity work, the organizing and the first pass. Apply professional judgment to every position before it goes out. Document the review. The firm gets the speed and keeps the defensibility, which is the combination clients cannot get from a tool alone.

The positioning, in one line

The headline that worried the profession, that clients are doing their own taxes with AI, is actually the marketing. Every AI return that goes out unverified is a reminder of why the verification a CPA provides is worth paying for. The firms that thrive will not fight the tools. They will sell the judgment the tools make more valuable, not less.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are AI tools going to replace CPAs for tax work?

They are automating the commodity layer, like organizing documents and producing a first-pass return, which clients already use them for. They are not replacing the verification and accountability a CPA provides, which is exactly the part rising AI use makes more valuable. The strategic response is to sell that judgment, not compete on speed.

What is the risk in clients using AI to prepare their own taxes?

General AI tools produce confident output that is frequently wrong on the parts of the tax code that carry penalties and exposure. They do not know the client's full situation, do not reliably track current rules, and have no stake in surviving an examination. The output looks finished but is not verified.

How should a CPA position against free AI tax tools?

Stop selling data entry and package verification as a named service. The client brings the AI-prepared return; the CPA confirms the facts, checks positions against current law, catches errors in both directions, and signs off as an accountable professional. Price the judgment, not the keystrokes.

Can a CPA use AI to prepare returns safely?

Yes, with discipline. Let AI accelerate the commodity work, apply professional judgment to every position before filing, and document the review. The Circular 230 duties of competence and diligence apply to the whole return regardless of what drafted it, so AI cannot be used to skip the review step.