Clearing the extension backlog with AI.
The profession's second busy season, which nobody writes about. What is worth doing with weeks left, and what is not.
With weeks left, the only AI work worth starting is the narrow kind: one task that produces a written output somebody already reviews, pointed at the documents rather than the judgment. Chasing what never arrived, reconciling it against what was requested, drafting the follow-up and assembling the index are all preparation. Return positions and review are not, and Circular 230 section 10.22 due diligence sits on a person regardless of what produced the draft.
What the backlog is measured against.
Two busy seasons, and the profession only ever writes about the first. January to April gets the readiness checklists and the vendor campaigns; September to October gets deadline calendars and offshore staffing ads. The second one is where the compression is worse, because the work that got extended is the work that was already difficult.
What to point it at, and what to leave alone.
- Chasing the documents that never arrived, and reconciling what did against what was asked for
- Drafting the client follow-up for a missing K-1 or a missing basis figure
- Assembling the workpaper index and flagging what is incomplete
- Summarizing a prior-year return to find what is missing this year
- Turning a pile of statements into a first-pass trial balance for review
- Deciding a return position
- Anything where the output would look right to somebody who did not already know the answer
- Introducing a tool your reviewers have never seen, in the weeks you cannot afford to catch it
- Sending client data anywhere new before the section 7216 question is settled
Most of it should wait until May.
A consultancy is supposed to tell you to start now. For anything that needs procurement, configuration, a data connection and a firm-wide rollout, starting now is the wrong call and the calendar says so. You would spend the scarcest weeks of your year learning software instead of filing returns.
The profession's buying window is May to August for a reason, and that is when implementation content is worth reading. What is worth doing in the next few weeks is narrow: pick the single most repetitive document task in front of you, use a tool your firm has already approved, and keep a person on every output.
The consent question does not pause for the season.
Pressure is exactly when return information ends up somewhere it should not. IRC section 7216 is a criminal statute and it does not have a busy-season exception. If client data is going to touch a tool that has not already been through this, the section 7216 consent page has the mandatory language and the requirements that make a form valid.
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Sources and standing.
Deadlines above are the standard extended due dates for calendar-year filers. Confirm your own client's dates, and note that disaster-area and other relief can move them. Circular 230 section 10.22 is the due diligence obligation referred to throughout. Last reviewed at source: September 2026.
- Treasury Department Circular No. 230, including section 10.22 (diligence as to accuracy) (checked 2026-10-27)
- IRS, Instructions for Form 7004 (automatic extension for business returns) (checked 2026-10-27)
- IRS, Instructions for Form 1041 (the 5½-month extension for estates and trusts) (checked 2026-10-27)
- IRS, Get an extension to file your tax return (October 15 for individuals) (checked 2026-10-27)
This is not legal advice or tax advice. It is how a practitioner who implements these systems reads the constraints, written down so you can check it. If something here is wrong, tell me and it gets corrected.
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