TaxStatus Aims to End Tax Season Chaos With New Data-Driven Tools

FRISCO, TX – January 14, 2026 – As financial professionals brace for another demanding tax season, fintech firm TaxStatus has launched two new productivity tools designed to transform the annual scramble for documents and data into a streamlined, strategic exercise. The company announced the release of its Tax Prep Checklist and Tax Return History tools, aiming to enhance efficiency and accuracy for advisors and their clients ahead of the 2025 filing season by leveraging direct-source, verified IRS data.

The announcement signals a significant step in the evolution of tax technology, moving beyond simple data storage and towards proactive, intelligent applications that address core pain points for both preparers and taxpayers. By automating tedious aspects of data collection and analysis, the tools promise to free up professionals to focus on higher-value advisory services.

“Our goal is to make verified IRS data more usable, more proactive, and more client-friendly,” said Kevin Knull, CEO of TaxStatus, in the company's announcement. “With the Tax Prep Checklist and Tax Return History tools, we’re giving professionals the ability to work more efficiently, more confidently, and with less errors, while helping clients approach tax filing with less stress and uncertainty.”

Streamlining a Notoriously Painful Process

For most accountants and financial advisors, the first quarter of the year is defined by what industry surveys consistently identify as their biggest challenges: workload compression and chasing clients for information. A recent study by Wolters Kluwer found that nearly half of tax professionals struggle with chasing down client data, a time-consuming task that creates bottlenecks and increases the risk of errors. Clients, in turn, are often overwhelmed by generic, multi-page checklists that force them to guess which of hundreds of potential documents apply to their specific situation.

TaxStatus's Tax Prep Checklist directly confronts this inefficiency. Instead of a one-size-fits-all document, the tool generates a personalized list for each client. By using consent-based access to a client’s prior-year tax data directly from the IRS, the checklist identifies the exact documents needed, specified by source and document type. For example, rather than a generic instruction to “gather all 1099s,” a client’s checklist would specify the exact 1099-INT from a particular bank or the 1099-NEC from a specific payer that was present on their previous return.

This data-driven approach not only simplifies the task for the taxpayer but also creates a structured, predictable workflow for the professional. The company highlights that this process provides a timely reason for advisors to secure client consent in January, creating a smooth Q1 touchpoint that helps clients feel more prepared and supported long before filing deadlines loom.

From Compliance to Strategic Insight

While the checklist tackles the pre-filing chaos, the second tool, Tax Return History, aims to elevate the advisor’s role from compliance officer to strategic partner. The tool provides a year-by-year comparison of a client’s historical 1040 tax returns, pulling every line item from the official IRS return transcript and organizing it into a structured Excel format.

This functionality allows professionals to move beyond the single-year focus of tax preparation and conduct deep historical analysis with the click of a button. Advisors can quickly analyze income trends, spot year-over-year discrepancies, identify previously missed deductions, and model future tax scenarios with a high degree of accuracy. This historical context is crucial for sophisticated tax planning, such as optimizing retirement account contributions, planning for capital gains, or advising on business owner compensation.

This move positions TaxStatus in an increasingly competitive field of tax planning software, where firms like Holistiplan and FP Alpha have gained traction by using OCR technology to scan and analyze client-provided tax returns. TaxStatus’s key differentiator is its reliance on data pulled directly from the IRS, which eliminates the potential for errors from scanning PDFs and ensures the analysis is based on the official, as-filed record. Industry watchers note this signals a strategic shift for the company, evolving from a secure “IRS data pipeline” into a formidable platform for comprehensive tax and financial planning.

Navigating the Intersection of Tech and Trust

Of course, providing frictionless access to a taxpayer's most sensitive financial information hinges entirely on security and trust. Handling IRS data carries immense responsibility, and a breach could be catastrophic for both clients and their advisors. Recognizing this, TaxStatus has built its platform on a foundation of rigorous security protocols and explicit, revocable consent.

The company is SOC2 compliant, a key industry standard for managing customer data, and employs end-to-end encryption for all data in transit and at rest. Critically, access to a client's IRS records is only granted after the taxpayer provides explicit authorization, typically via IRS Form 8821 (Tax Information Authorization). This digital consent process, which the company says takes less than a minute, puts the client firmly in control of who can access their information and for how long.

This focus on security and consent is essential for overcoming a major barrier to fintech adoption in the advisory space. As regulatory bodies like the CFP Board release new guidance on technology, they emphasize that professionals cannot blindly rely on automated outputs. Advisors retain a duty of care to conduct due diligence on their technology vendors and apply their own professional judgment. By providing transparent, verifiable data directly from the source, platforms like TaxStatus aim to augment—not replace—the advisor's expertise, building a framework of trust that is essential for the future of digital financial advice.