TaxAudit AI: Automated Peer Review for Solo Preparers

Accountants who work in corporate roles (GL, Financial Reporting) often want to do taxes on the side for extra income. However, they face a massive confidence gap. In a firm, a junior preparer has their work reviewed by a Senior or Manager. As a solo side-hustler, they have no one to catch their mistakes. This fear of IRS letters or professional embarrassment prevents many from starting or limits them to only the simplest returns.

• Corporate Accountants: CPAs working in industry who want to pick up 20-50 seasonal clients.
• New Solo Practitioners: Recently departed from a firm and missing the 'safety net' of a review team.

Multiple signals in the /r/accounting community show users asking specifically how to gain enough knowledge to do returns "confidently". The current workaround is literally years of extra schooling (Masters in Tax) or taking low-paying jobs at H&R Block just for the supervision.

TaxAudit AI: A simple secure portal where a user uploads a draft return (PDF) and the underlying data (Excel trial balance).

• The software runs a diagnostic against a library of common 'gotchas' (e.g., 'You claimed X but forgot the corresponding adjustment on Schedule Y').
• It generates a 'Review Points' list, mimicking the feedback a senior manager would give.

This is a risk mitigation purchase. If the software catches one $500 error or prevents one IRS notice, it has paid for itself for the entire year. Accountants are naturally risk-averse and are used to paying for professional tools.

Medium. While tax law is complex, the MVP doesn't need to know everything. It only needs to know the 50 most common errors that new preparers make. Using LLMs with RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) on IRS instructions makes parsing and logic-checking significantly easier than it was 3 years ago.

There are approximately 650,000 CPAs in the US. If only 0.5% are starting side-hustles or solo practices and need a 'second pair of eyes,' that's 3,250 potential users. At $200/season ($50/mo for 4 months), this is a $650k ARR niche opportunity for a solo dev.