Where Knowledge Meets AI
Tax Review
Article
How to Measure Tax Review Efficiency Without Gaming It
Cycle time, review passes per return, and recurring-comment rate are three numbers most firms can already pull from their workflow. Here's exactly how each one gets faked the moment it becomes a target instead of a diagnostic.
Article
How Long Does Tax Return Review Take?
The IRS publishes exactly how long a return takes to prepare, broken down by activity, for every return type it processes. Review isn't one of those categories — here's the honest range that exists, and what would have to be measured to get a real one.
Article
What Is Review by Exception for CPA Firms?
Review by exception means most of a return gets no second look at all — only what's flagged does. When that scope is defensible under Circular 230, and when it's a diligence failure wearing an efficiency label.
Institutional Knowledge
Article
A review comment doesn't disappear. It just stops being findable.
A reviewer's note on a return isn't deleted when the season ends — it's archived. What actually happens to it, and why archived turns out to be a different thing from findable.
Article
Institutional knowledge doesn't leave with a reviewer. It was never captured.
Four structural reasons a tax firm's review knowledge disappears — and why turnover, the one everyone blames first, explains the least of them.
Article
Institutional Knowledge in Tax Firms: The Complete Guide
Why the judgment behind a tax return outlives no ledger entry, why the pipeline that used to replace it is shrinking, and what a firm can do structurally before the next departure takes it — the hub for Pernee's Institutional Knowledge cluster.
Pernee Insights
Article
The IRS told preparers to bill less for AI. The AICPA says the savings aren't free.
In June the IRS told tax preparers to credit clients for whatever AI actually saves them, through lower fees. In September the AICPA formally asked the IRS to clarify that instruction — arguing it ignores what AI costs the firm before any hour is saved.
Article
Form 1099-DA arrived. It skips the number that matters.
Form 1099-DA started reporting gross proceeds on digital-asset sales for the first time this filing season — and, per Treasury's own phased timeline, without cost basis. A reviewer who treats it like a 1099-B is one step from signing off on the wrong gain.
Article
The Tax Court spotted three citations an AI invented. Nobody else did.
On February 9, 2026, the U.S. Tax Court found that three of the four cases cited in a taxpayer's brief don't exist — invented, the judge concluded, by a large language model. It didn't sanction anyone. This is what nobody checked first, and what already requires someone to.
Recently published
How to Measure Tax Review Efficiency Without Gaming It
Cycle time, review passes per return, and recurring-comment rate are three numbers most firms can already pull from their workflow. Here's exactly how each one gets faked the moment it becomes a target instead of a diagnostic.
Form 1099-DA arrived. It skips the number that matters.
Form 1099-DA started reporting gross proceeds on digital-asset sales for the first time this filing season — and, per Treasury's own phased timeline, without cost basis. A reviewer who treats it like a 1099-B is one step from signing off on the wrong gain.
Institutional Knowledge in Tax Firms: The Complete Guide
Why the judgment behind a tax return outlives no ledger entry, why the pipeline that used to replace it is shrinking, and what a firm can do structurally before the next departure takes it — the hub for Pernee's Institutional Knowledge cluster.
How Long Does Tax Return Review Take?
The IRS publishes exactly how long a return takes to prepare, broken down by activity, for every return type it processes. Review isn't one of those categories — here's the honest range that exists, and what would have to be measured to get a real one.
The Tax Court spotted three citations an AI invented. Nobody else did.
On February 9, 2026, the U.S. Tax Court found that three of the four cases cited in a taxpayer's brief don't exist — invented, the judge concluded, by a large language model. It didn't sanction anyone. This is what nobody checked first, and what already requires someone to.
What Is Review by Exception for CPA Firms?
Review by exception means most of a return gets no second look at all — only what's flagged does. When that scope is defensible under Circular 230, and when it's a diligence failure wearing an efficiency label.
The IRS just wrote tax preparers a rulebook for AI. It doesn't say to tell the client.
OPR Alert 2026-19 maps a practitioner's existing Circular 230 duties onto AI-assisted tax work — due diligence, competence, honest billing, client confidentiality. It never asks the practitioner to tell the client AI was involved.
A carryforward is inherited. Nothing this year re-proves it.
Four of the five tax return review checks test this year's return. The fifth tests whether it agrees with last year's — and a carryforward that was wrong once stays wrong until someone actually looks.
Common Tax Return Review Errors
Four kinds of errors that keep reaching review at CPA firms — carryforward mismatches, unauthorized elections, source disagreement, and disclosure gaps — and the structural reason each one survives preparation instead of getting caught there.