AI Tax Software Comparison: CPA Firms 2026

Q: Can Filed and Accrual AI be used together?

In principle, yes — Filed handles document intake and draft preparation for individual and small business returns, while Accrual operates at the full-workflow level. In practice, Accrual is not yet accessible to most small CPA firms; it's deploying at Top 100 practices and mid-market firms. A small firm using Filed for document intake and drafts, with senior staff handling review, effectively replicates the layered approach Accrual delivers at scale. If your firm is under 50 employees, the Filed-plus-review-workflow model is the accessible version of what Accrual promises.

Q: How does Juno compare to Accrual AI for K-1 automation?

Juno automates approximately 90% of data entry across more than 90 document types, including K-1s, and reduces a 2-3 hour prep task to 7-10 minutes. It flags inconsistencies for human review rather than completing the return unattended. Accrual operates at a higher level of automation — its AI agents handle the full preparation and review workflow end-to-end, from document receipt through draft return, for 1040s, S-corps, partnerships, and multi-entity returns. Accrual's K-1 handling at scale is more robust, but it is not yet available to small CPA firms. For a firm under 50 staff processing K-1s today, Juno is the practical choice; Accrual is the 2027 option to watch.

CPA firm owners evaluating AI tax software in Q4 2026 are looking at a crowded, confusing market. At least a dozen funded startups have collectively raised hundreds of millions to automate the preparation layer — and every major legacy platform is now bolting AI features onto software built in the 1990s. The comparison that actually matters for a 5-to-50 person practice isn't enterprise rankings or analyst quadrants. It's this: which of the four platforms generating the most comparison searches — Filed, Accrual AI, Black Ore Tax Autopilot, and Juno — is the right fit for your workflow, your return mix, and your firm size?

This page answers that question directly. Each platform gets a straight assessment: what it does, who it's built for, what it costs, and what the documented performance looks like. Then a three-question framework to cut through the noise.

The Four Platforms at a Glance

Platform	Approach	Best for	Firm size sweet spot	Pricing
Filed	AI-native intake and draft prep	Small firms, individual and small-business returns	2–20 employees	Contact for pricing
Accrual AI	Full workflow automation (end-to-end)	Mid-market now; small firms 2027	Mid-market / Top 100 currently	Enterprise; contact for pricing
Black Ore Tax Autopilot	Augmentation — works inside existing software	Complex returns, firms avoiding migration	3–30 employees	Contact for pricing; accessible entry point
Juno	Standalone 1040 data entry automation	High-volume individual return practices	5–50 employees, 300+ returns	~$45/return; low $30s at volume
TaxGPT	Browser automation inside your current platform	Firms locked into Lacerte/ProSystem/Drake	5–50 employees	Per seat; contact for pricing

Note: Filed, Accrual, and Black Ore pricing is not publicly listed. Request demos and ask for firm-size-specific pricing — all three will negotiate.

Filed: AI-Native Document Intake Without the Migration

Filed is an AI-native document intake and draft preparation platform built for individual and small business returns. Unlike the legacy workflow of scanning documents into a folder and manually entering data, Filed ingests client documents, extracts the relevant figures, identifies what's incomplete, and produces a draft return ready for CPA review — without a preparer doing the extraction work manually.

The design philosophy is accessibility. Where Accrual is building for large firms and Black Ore targets complex return workflows, Filed is positioned as the entry point for small practices that want to capture the core automation benefit — less time on data entry — without a platform migration or enterprise procurement process.

What makes Filed notable: It addresses the first-mile problem of tax prep that most AI tools skip. Document collection and initial intake are where small-firm preparation breaks down most often — incomplete documents, disorganized client uploads, manual extraction. Filed attacks that step directly.

Documented outcome: Filed reduces the manual intake and draft preparation time for individual and small business returns, letting a 5-10 person practice process a higher return volume without adding staff. Specific per-return time benchmarks are not publicly published; request a pilot return before committing.

Best for: Practices doing primarily individual and small business returns (1040s, S-corps for straightforward entities) that want to reduce intake friction and data entry time without rebuilding their entire workflow. Filed is the most accessible on-ramp in the AI tax prep category.

Pricing: Not publicly listed. Per-firm plans; contact for current rates.

Accrual AI: The Full-Workflow System (Coming to Small Firms)

Accrual launched in February 2026 with $75 million from General Catalyst — one of the largest seed rounds in accounting software history — to automate the full preparation and review workflow end-to-end. Its AI agents receive client documents, identify missing information, send follow-up requests autonomously, and produce complete draft returns ready for partner review. The CPA reviews and signs off. The mechanical work between document receipt and completed draft is removed from the human workflow entirely.

The company's published benchmark: every 50 complex returns handled by Accrual is equivalent to one additional accountant in capacity. Not faster execution of the same workflow — actual capacity replacement.

Early partners include H&R Block, Armanino, Creative Planning, and multiple Top 100 firms. These are not pilots. These are production deployments at real volume.

Return types covered: Accrual handles the full range of return types a typical CPA firm processes — 1040s with multiple income sources, S-corps, partnerships, multi-entity situations. It is not a single-form tool; it's a preparation engine for the typical mid-market firm's workload.

The honest small-firm read: Accrual is not accessible to most firms under 50 employees today. It's deploying at scale with large partners. The indirect competitive effect arrives in 12-18 months: when H&R Block or a Top 100 firm automates its preparation layer and can handle significantly more volume with the same staff, it starts competing for client segments it previously passed on. The small-firm defensive move isn't adopting Accrual — it's automating your own prep layer (with Filed, Juno, or Black Ore) before your clients discover what large firms can now offer.

Pricing: Enterprise; not publicly listed. Not yet available to most small CPA practices.

Best for: Watch list. Reassess in 2027 when small-firm availability is expected.

Black Ore Tax Autopilot: Full Pipeline That Fits Inside Your Existing Setup

Black Ore Tax Autopilot went generally available on April 29, 2026 — the same day as Instead AI, in a notable parallel launch that marked the AI tax prep market reaching production maturity simultaneously from multiple angles.

The architecture is different from every other tool in this comparison: Black Ore does not replace your existing software. It automates the work that goes into it. The pipeline — document ingestion, data extraction, return preparation, workpaper generation — runs through Black Ore, and the completed output pushes into your existing platform (CCH, UltraTax, or whichever you use). Your software stays. Your data stays. Your staff doesn't relearn a new system.

The positioning: "complex tax workflows from start to finish with little to no human intervention." The CPA reviews the completed return and signs. Black Ore handles the preparation work up to that point.

What makes Black Ore distinct from Juno or Filed: Black Ore targets complex returns, not just 1040 volume. If your practice does partnership returns, multi-state filings, or entity returns with more complicated structures, Black Ore's full-pipeline approach handles that complexity better than a tool optimized for standardized individual returns.

Who it's built for: CPA firms under 30 employees that process complex returns and cannot absorb a platform migration. The combination of handling complex workflows and fitting on top of existing software makes Black Ore the lowest switching-friction option for practices that need more than 1040 automation.

Documented outcome: Black Ore's full-pipeline design means the firm goes from document receipt to a completed, workpapered return ready for CPA review — with "little to no human intervention" in between. Time-savings benchmarks for specific return types are not publicly published; request a pilot on a complex return type before committing.

Pricing: Not publicly listed. Accessible entry-level for small firms — not enterprise-only. Contact for per-firm pricing.

Juno and TaxGPT: The Per-Return Economics That Change Your Pricing Math

Juno and TaxGPT solve the same fundamental problem from different architectural positions, and together they've become the comparison pair that CPA firm owners are most actively evaluating.

Juno

Juno was built by Dave Haase, a CPA who ran Golden State Accounting before founding the company. The practitioner origin matters: he built the tool he needed, not the tool a venture team thought accountants needed.

Juno raised $12M in seed funding from Bonfire Ventures in April 2026. The product automates approximately 90% of data entry across more than 90 document types — W-2s, 1099s, K-1s, PDFs, spreadsheets — and reduces a typical 2-3 hour prep task to 7-10 minutes. Flagged inconsistencies go to the human preparer for review. Accountants drive the process; AI handles the tedium.

Pricing starts at $45 per return, dropping to the low $30s for high-volume firms. Juno reached mid-seven-figure ARR in eight months and has nearly 500 customers.

The math for a 400-return practice: $45 × 400 returns = $18,000 in Juno cost. If those 400 returns previously consumed 800 preparer hours at $50/hour blended cost, you recover $40,000 in staff capacity for $18,000 in tooling — a 2.2x return in the first year, before counting the advisory revenue you redirect that time toward.

The honest limitation: Juno is optimized for standardized individual returns. Complex partnership returns and multi-state entities still require significant review time. If your practice is partnership-heavy or has a complex entity mix, pair Juno with Black Ore or evaluate Black Ore exclusively.

Best for: Firms doing 300+ 1040s annually that want to stop paying senior staff to do data entry.

TaxGPT

TaxGPT's Tax Prep Agent uses browser automation to operate your existing tax software. It opens the platform, pulls workpapers, enters return data, runs diagnostics, and hands off to a review agent — all inside the tool you already use. No migration. No retraining.

As of March 2026, TaxGPT reported 70,000+ users across the profession. For a 20-person firm processing 2,000 returns, the company projects 45 minutes saved per 1040 and 5x review capacity. The platform is currently optimized for 1040s, with 1065s and 1120s on the roadmap.

Pricing is per seat; contact for current rates.

The honest limitation: Browser automation is architecturally dependent on your platform vendor's update cycle. When Lacerte or ProSystem updates their interface, TaxGPT's integration can break temporarily. Ask for their update response time SLA before committing.

Best for: Firms that have built years of workflow inside a specific platform and cannot migrate. If your bottleneck is the preparation step but your platform is non-negotiable, TaxGPT is the practical path.

How to Choose: The 3-Question Framework

Skip the demos until you've answered these three questions. They'll eliminate at least two tools before you spend a minute on a vendor call.

1. What is your actual bottleneck?

Document collection and intake is chaos → Start with Filed (or SurePrep if you need an established option with Thomson Reuters support). The AI prep tools that follow assume organized, complete documents. If you're still chasing clients for W-2s in April, no prep automation tool will fix that.
Data entry is consuming senior staff time → Juno (if you're open to a new workflow) or TaxGPT (if you want to stay on your current platform).
Complex return prep is eating your highest-cost hours → Black Ore Tax Autopilot. Its full-pipeline approach was built for exactly this problem.
You want full end-to-end automation and your firm is growing toward mid-market → Accrual. Not accessible at small-firm scale today, but the right conversation to start.

2. How many returns do you process per year?

Under 150 returns: The per-return economics of Juno are marginal. Start with Filed for intake automation or TaxGPT's seat-based model, which doesn't require high volume to justify the cost.
150-500 returns: Juno's $45/return pricing delivers clear ROI in this range. Black Ore is also worth a pilot.
500+ returns: All four platforms are worth evaluating. Volume gives you negotiating leverage on pricing for Black Ore, Accrual, and TaxGPT.

3. Are you willing to migrate your platform?

Yes, if the efficiency case is strong enough → Evaluate Filed as a fresh start, or Instead AI (reviewed separately) as a full legacy platform replacement.
No — my workflow is entrenched → TaxGPT (browser automation inside your current platform) or Black Ore (augments your existing stack without touching it).

If your answer to question 3 is "no" but your answer to question 1 is "complex return prep is our bottleneck," Black Ore is almost certainly the right starting point.

FAQ

Which AI tax software is best for small CPA firms?

For high-volume 1040 practices, Juno offers the clearest economics at ~$45 per return — it reduces a 2-3 hour prep task to 7-10 minutes and handles 90+ document types. For firms locked into Lacerte, ProSystem, or Drake, TaxGPT adds AI capability without migration. For complex return workflows without a platform switch, Black Ore Tax Autopilot is the strongest option. Filed is the most accessible entry point for small firms starting with AI-native intake. Accrual is a watch-list item for small practices — its small-firm availability is expected in 2027.

Can Filed and Accrual AI be used together?

In principle, yes. Filed handles document intake and draft preparation for individual and small business returns, while Accrual operates at the full-workflow level across a broader return mix. In practice, Accrual is not yet accessible to most small CPA firms — it's deploying at Top 100 practices and mid-market firms. A small firm using Filed for document intake and drafts, with senior staff handling review, effectively replicates the layered approach Accrual delivers at scale. If your firm is under 50 employees today, the Filed-plus-review model is the practical equivalent.

Is Black Ore Tax Autopilot suitable for firms under 10 staff?

Yes. Black Ore's augmentation model — it works inside your existing software rather than replacing it — makes it the lowest switching-friction option for very small CPA practices. The platform handles complex tax workflows from document intake through completed return, then pushes the finished work into CCH, UltraTax, or your existing platform. For a 3-10 person firm that can't absorb a platform migration, Black Ore is the most accessible path to AI-assisted preparation for complex returns. Pricing is not published but is positioned as accessible for small firms — not enterprise-only.

How does Juno TaxGPT compare to Accrual AI for K-1 automation?

Juno automates approximately 90% of data entry across 90+ document types including K-1s, reducing a 2-3 hour prep task to 7-10 minutes. It flags inconsistencies for human review. Accrual operates at a higher level — its AI agents handle the full preparation and review workflow end-to-end, from document receipt through draft return, including partnerships and multi-entity returns. Accrual's K-1 handling at scale is more comprehensive, but it is not available to small CPA firms today. For a firm under 50 staff processing K-1s now, Juno is the practical choice. Accrual is the 2027 option to watch.

What is the typical ROI on AI tax automation for a 5-person CPA firm?

At $45 per return, a 5-person firm processing 300 returns annually pays approximately $13,500 for Juno and recovers roughly 450 hours of staff preparation time (1.5 hours saved per return against a 2-3 hour baseline). At a blended staff cost of $50/hour, that's $22,500 in recovered capacity against $13,500 in tooling — a 1.7x return before counting the advisory revenue redirected from recovered hours. For Black Ore, ROI structure is similar but requires direct pricing negotiation. The documented SurePrep/Intuit Assist case study at LBMC showed a 4-hour prep task reduced to 30 minutes — an 87% time reduction — at a firm with similar volume.

What to Do This Week

Don't evaluate all four platforms at once. Pick the question that describes your firm's actual bottleneck:

My intake process is chaotic — Request a Filed demo and test it on three returns from last season.
My 1040 data entry is eating senior time — Benchmark your actual prep time per return this week (track 10 returns). Compare it to Juno's 7-10 minute benchmark. If the gap is larger than two hours, the ROI math is straightforward.
My complex returns are the problem — Contact Black Ore Tax Autopilot and ask for a pilot on one partnership or S-corp return type. Measure time saved against your current workflow.
I'm locked into my platform — Request a TaxGPT demo for your specific platform (Lacerte, ProSystem, or Drake) and ask about their update response SLA before anything else.

The Q4 window is when CPA firms make software decisions for the coming tax season. The firms that go into January with a tested workflow have better seasons than the ones that start evaluating in February.

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AI Tax Software Comparison for CPA Firms (2026): Filed, Accrual, Black Ore, and Juno