For US accounting and tax firms

Accounting answering service, 24/7.

20 million+taxpayers the IRS expected to file by the extended due date, October 15, 2025.IRS news release IR-2025-104, read 20 Sep 2026

Under each month is its share of the profession’s labour in 2025, people on payroll times average weekly hours. July, August and September sit level at the bottom, and September had 1,086,100 people on payroll, the fewest of any month; March had 1,200,400. BLS Current Employment Statistics, NAICS 54120, 2025, the monthly shares are our arithmetic, employees times average weekly hours, read 20 Sep 2026. The weight of the line is drawn, not measured. Dates: IRS Publication 509, Tax Calendars, read 20 Sep 2026.

The returns you extended in April come due in September and October. September is the month the profession has the fewest people on payroll. Below are four jobs an AI coordinator does in those months, each one shown working on made-up records.

It never opens a return. Drake, Lacerte and UltraTax have no door for us, and this does not need one.

Run it on your own bookTalk to Claire first

She tells the client where the return is. She tells nobody else.

Play a client in extension season. Ask where your return is, send the item holding it, or ask Claire to send it to your lender, and watch what she can touch and what stays sealed. Or ask her, as yourself, what she would do at your firm.

Client fileThe book · 12 extended
Or ask as yourself, no PIN needed
· 2025 Form 1040 · extendedSample firm · seededDueOct 1516 days away
Claire, the AI client coordinator at Sample Street Tax & Accounting

Claire

AI client coordinator

Sample Street Tax & Accounting

You’re playing Odette. Your portal PIN is 5089. Nothing real is ever asked for.

ClaireSample Street Tax and Accounting. This is Claire, the AI client coordinator. Are you asking about your return, or about what I would do at your firm?

What finishing this return needs

Sealed until the PIN matches
Sealed
Sealed
Sealed
Sealed
Sealed

The rest of the book, oldest blocker first

R-4159157dDocs not sent
R-415762dCorrected 1099
R-416250dCorrected 1099
R-415342dDocs not sent
R-415637dCorrected 1099

What Claire works from

Nothing. The file isn’t in her context at all until the PIN matches.

Sealed in the firm’s system

Social Security no.
Income and amounts
Refund or balance
The return itself

Anything from a return sent outside the return-preparation path, a lender included, needs the client's signed §7216 consent naming that recipient. Claire sends the form, never the return. The rule: “the consent must also identify the specific recipient (or recipients) of the tax return information.” 26 CFR 301.7216-3(a). A knowing or reckless disclosure is a misdemeanor, 26 U.S.C. §7216(a), with a civil penalty for each one, 26 U.S.C. §6713(a). All read 20 Sep 2026. State board rules were not checked. Deeplathe does not give legal or tax advice.

You extended them in April. Each one is waiting on one thing.

A K-1 from another firm, a corrected 1099, basis from the last accountant. Oldest first, because the oldest item is the one nobody is chasing. Open a return and have the chase drafted. You send it.

12 extended and blocked. 5 are one item from done, worth 6h that could leave September. 4 have never been chased once. 2 are past the extended due date.A made-up firm, rebuilt for today.

Why the oldest item matters: “In 2024, 39% of tax claims were for untimely filed or unfiled tax returns.” Deb Rood of CNA, in Accounting Today, 25 Sep 2025, the AICPA program's underwriter, quoted in the trade press, read 20 Sep 2026. How many of a real firm’s extended returns wait on an outside K-1 is published nowhere, which is why the first call is a count of your own.

You answered the notice. The Service has said nothing since.

No tracking number, no callback, and a client who rings every six weeks. Every letter the firm has out, measured against the IRS's own averages, with the next date to look and the client update already written.

6 matters out with the IRS. 2 past its own average. 5 clients told nothing in 60 days or more.Made-up matters.

The gold tick is the IRS’s own figure for that kind of matter, an average and not a promise: 94 days for individual correspondence and 319 for business in fiscal 2025 (it was 147 the year before), National Taxpayer Advocate, 2025 Annual Report to Congress, Figure 1.2.5, read 20 Sep 2026; amended returns up to 16 weeks, IRS, Where's My Amended Return?, read 20 Sep 2026. The practitioner line answered 62.0% of calls that year, after 13.4 minutes on hold, same figure.

What Gustav is told on the next call

Hi Gustav. We mailed the penalty abatement request, 1120-S on October 26. The IRS gives no tracking for correspondence. Its own reported average for business correspondence last fiscal year was 319 days. Yours has been out 338 days, which is past that. Nothing is needed from you today. We look again on Oct 12 and will write either way.

Look again
Oct 12
Rule for the next look
Past the average: every 14 days
It will not
ring the IRS, log in anywhere, or promise a date

The letter said what was in. Then a client wrote: can you also.

At a fixed fee the extra work never reaches a timesheet, so no report shows it. Each request is read against the letter that client signed, the moment it arrives. Pick one, or type one of your own.

7 requests from one client since January. 5 are not in the letter. 4 were done anyway and never billed.A made-up client and a made-up inbox.

Engagement letter, made up

Harriet

Signed January 12. Fixed fee, billed in two halves.

  1. 1Prepare the federal Form 1040, with Schedule C for the design studio.
  2. 2Prepare the Illinois resident return.
  3. 3Calculate the four quarterly estimated payments.
  4. 4One planning call before year end.

Anything not listed above is quoted separately before work starts.

Not in the letterthe picked request

No line of the letter covers it. The letter's own clause applies: "Anything not listed above is quoted separately before work starts."

Drafted for the partner. Fee left blank. Not sent.

Thanks, Harriet. A return for another taxpayer is outside the engagement letter you signed on January 12, which covers the four services listed in it. We can take it on as an add-on. You will get a short change order with the fee before any work starts.

At the made-up firm, without the check: Prepared in March. Never billed.

Why this is on the page: in a 2022 YouGov survey of 506 US firms with 1 to 50 people, 90% had clients not billed for out-of-scope work, 43% said the firm just absorbs it, and the average put on it was more than $76,000 a year. Ignition press release, 23 Aug 2022: YouGov, 506 US firms of 1 to 50 people, survey paid for by a company that sells billing software, 2022, read 20 Sep 2026. Billing software prices the add-on once somebody notices (Ignition, on managing scope creep with software, read 20 Sep 2026). This is the noticing. A client’s email is return information, so it runs only under a signed contract carrying the notice 26 CFR 301.7216-2(d), read 20 Sep 2026 requires, inside the United States. We have not checked any state rule.

The first call is a query against your own book.

You have been sold to by every practice-management vendor alive, so here is the whole of it, including the part where we find out this is not worth buying.

  1. The call

    Fifteen minutes and one query against your own workflow tool or tax software: how many returns you extended last year, how many waited on somebody outside the firm, and how many were still moving in December.

    You run it. We watch.

  2. What that answers

    Whether this is a product or a tab in your extension spreadsheet. If the number is small we say so, and there is nothing to sell you. Nobody publishes it, so your book is the only place it exists.

    It costs you the fifteen minutes.

  3. If the number is real

    A working version on your own records before you pay anything: Claire on a client line, the extended book, the letters and the diary, set up the way your firm runs them.

    We build it. You look at it.

  4. If you keep it

    One monthly fee covers building your version and keeping it running. No setup fee, stop at the end of any month, thirty days money back from go-live, prorated.

    A draft goes nowhere until a person at your firm sends it.

Three things it never does

  • It does not read, write or open a tax return. Drake, Lacerte and UltraTax have no door for us, and this does not need one.
  • It does not send return information anywhere. §7216 makes that a disclosure needing signed consent that names the recipient, so it sends the client the form instead.
  • It does not give tax advice, set a fee, sign anything, ring the IRS or represent anybody.

What your software already does

Portals, organizers, e-signature, reminders and document chasing come inside the practice-management software you already pay for. Reading source documents and a first pass at the return ship inside the tax suites. Notice intake and transcript monitoring are sold too. None of that is on this page. What is here starts where those stop.

Nobody has bought this yet, and we do not know whether your extended book is big enough to justify it. That is the first question, not the last. If the answer is a spreadsheet tab, keep your money.

Run it on your own book

What it would cost you.

Move the four lines to your firm. Every figure comes off the published price list, and where the honest answer is custom it says so instead of guessing.

The firm’s website too, built and run by us

Your numbers land on Standard, $749 a month.

StandardWhere your numbers land

Your website, with Claire, the book, the diary and the scope check

$749a month

  • minutes on the phone450
  • emails3,400
  • text messages1,200
  • documents read2,000

No setup fee. Or $6,741 for the year, which is 3 months free.

Pro

Full site with SEO, and the same four

$1,499a month

  • minutes on the phone1,300
  • emails8,500
  • text messages2,500
  • documents read5,400

No setup fee. Or $13,491 for the year, which is 3 months free.

Enterprise

Custom site and custom agent, scoped and run as one

Custom

  • no ceilingscoped to you

The number does not exist until the scope does.

  • You see a working demo before you pay anything.
  • One monthly fee covers the demo, building your version, and keeping it running. No setup fee.
  • Stop at the end of any month.
  • 30 days money back from go-live, prorated for the days it ran.

Every figure comes off the published price list. For scale: a six-person firm’s whole practice-management licence can cost less than the first column. If this is not worth more to you than that, do not buy it.

Finish pass

Ring the number. That's the product answering.

+1 (646) 212-0980

00 · Any time

Our own AI receptionist answers that number, running on our business instead of yours. Claire, in the corner of this page, is the one built for a firm like yours. Call her there and ask where your return is.

Free · 24/7 · Hang up any time

01 · A set time

Rather book than ring? Take an open slot and Michael runs the call himself.

Book a 15-minute call →

Prefer email? michael@deeplathe.com — it reaches Michael, not a helpdesk.

Then we build it, show you the finished thing on a call, and you decide. $0 setup · nothing paid until you've seen the work · 30-day money-back from go-live.

Accounting answering service

It answers firm calls, books appointments, and handles reschedules, 24/7. It also tracks what each extended return is waiting on. It gives no tax advice.