Friday, January 24, 2025

Best Prompts For Tax Pros Part 2

Today's Topic: Best Prompts For Tax Pros Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of the best AI prompts to try as a tax pro or bookkeeper. You can check out part 1 here.

Refresher: how to write great prompts

  1. Start with an identity ("You're a CPA with 20 years of experience")
  2. Give it full context (files and URLs work too)
  3. End with "keep it concise" so it doesn't ramble
  4. Be clear on the output you want (they can generate graphs, images too)
  5. Be pesky. Iterate on your response. Ask it to do it again.
  6. Copy paste your best prompts in a prompt repo
  7. Make a GPT out of your most common use cases (learn more about that here)

Make sure you add some of this context before copying the prompts below into your chat!

The Prompts

#1: {Feed in client's current return} Assess this client’s tax return data for potential audit triggers, such as high home office deductions or disproportionate charitable contributions. Then give me suggestions on how to reduce the audit risk.

Toni's Take: I got this idea from a discussion I had on Facebook groups with tax pros. It's a simple check you can do on anyone's return if you've been facing a lot of audits. This is especially useful for your less experience staff who don't know what to look for yet.

#2: Run a scenario comparing this client’s tax liability as a sole proprietor versus forming an LLC with S-Corp election.

Toni's Take: This one can be modified in a lot of ways. The general idea is to use AI to help plan different scenarios for your client. One of the big ones being their entity of choice and filing status. You can input the client's tax returns, financials, and other context you might know about their situation that might play a role in making that choice.

#3: {insert financial document, contract, source doc, or tax return} Check this document for errors, inconsistencies, or anomalies. {Add additional context}

Toni's Take: Use this prompt to double-check work. Just make sure to add enough context so the AI knows what kinds of anomalies or inconsistencies to look for. You can also upload multiple docs and ask it to compare against them, like reconciliation. This is very useful for checking across areas where data is duplicated or has been copied over. It's also useful for spotting things in longer documents or financials that otherwise you would have missed.

#4: Simulate the potential tax savings of {business operational decisions like hiring a family member}

Toni's Take: As the tax expert, advising your clients on the tax implications of business decisions is a huge value add. And a lot of tax preparers don't do it. If you want to stand out, this prompt can help you guide them through decisions like hiring, taking on partners, moving locations, opening new business lines, and more.

I hope these were useful. Any of them can be modified and stretched. Please keep us posted on what prompts you use and which you come up with - we can share them with the other tax pros in our community.

Happy prompting!

P.S. this email series is by CleanUpBuddy.ai, which helps you turn a tangle of bank statements into a clean P&L in under a minute using AI.

It's great for those Schedule C clients without clean books. You know who I'm talking about. Feel free to check out our site to see how we can help you reclaim hours of manual work this tax rush without outsourcing or hiring.

We also invite you to join our Discourse community for other bookkeepers & tax pros using CleanUpBuddy here. We'll add more content there as well as announce events, special promos, and more.

Thanks for tuning in, happy to help with any questions. Just drop a reply.

Touch base next week,

~Toni, CEO of CleanUpBuddy.ai

Back to blog