Tax return review, done the same way every time. With AI, by CPAs.
We run an independent first pass on prepared returns, prepare planning letters from filed returns, and teach firms to do both. Built in practice by a tax director who signs about 400 returns a year.
Book 20 minutes Get the one page sheet
One conversation. No pitch, no follow up sequence.
The library. Launching December.
Every prompt we use, the workbooks, and the process behind them, kept current through the season. Accessible monthly price. The first fifty firms get a founding rate that does not go up. Leave your email and you are on the list.
One email when it opens. Nothing else.
The Blind Tally Method
An old control applied to new tools. One chat reads the source documents and last year's return and builds an Excel worksheet of what this year's return should contain. A second chat compares that worksheet to the prepared return and reports every difference, in both directions, with the page it came from. The first chat never sees the return. A person decides every finding.
The model is good at reading and poor at adding, so Excel does the arithmetic and control checks have to come to zero before anything moves. The findings come back as a numbered list a preparer can act on, largest dollar first.
Run it for you
For firms that want the findings and not the process. We run the review in our own tenant, per return or per season. That starts with a conversation about where the documents go and who sees them, in writing, before anything is sent.
Learn to build it
The method is not a secret. The one page sheet gives you the basic version to run today. The library, launching December, gives you all of it, kept current. The workshop sets it up for your practice.
Planning letters
From a filed return, two files. An internal workbook with the detail a planner needs, the opportunities to consider, and a projection at the Form 1040 line level. And a two page client letter in plain language, a summary of last year and a form for what they expect this year. A professional reads every letter against the return before it goes out.
Admin runs it. A partner reviews it. The client comes to the planning meeting having thought about their year. That is the advisory conversation, started.
Tax Return Review Workshop
A working session with your preparers and reviewers. How to review a return the same way every time, where AI fits in that process and where it does not, which model to use and why, and how to keep client data inside the firm's control. For firms that want to build their own.
Where it began
Jim Wilhelm started using AI in his tax practice when the first tools became public, mostly because his son was using them and he did not want to be left behind. Three seasons on real returns taught him where the tools help and where they hurt when trusted blindly. The 2026 season was the first the models were good enough for a real process, and the Blind Tally Method is what came out of it.
Wilhelm Automation Group is two CPAs, Jim and his brother Ted, with about forty years of public accounting between them. We build for firms our size, priced for firms our size.
Talk to us
Twenty minutes, one conversation, no pitch. If it is useful we keep talking. If not, you have a sheet of prompts and a method.
james@wilhelmautomation.com | 203-701-9499 | Milford, Connecticut