Dec 15, 2025 | AI

Over the last year, we’ve talked a lot about how AI will change the game for tax professionals. Today (December 15), that future becomes more real in a very practical way with the launch of Thomson Reuters Ready to Review. 

Ready to Review is our new cloud-based, agentic AI tax workflow solution built on CoCounsel. For tax year 2025, it modernizes 1040 tax return preparation and is designed to take on the heavy, repetitive work of gathering client documents and preparing returns—so tax professionals can focus on what drew many of us to this profession in the first place: problem solving, critical thinking, and delivering great counsel to clients. 

For too long, firms have been stuck in a pattern that everyone recognizes as unsustainable—ever more complex returns, tighter deadlines, and mounting pressure on teams already stretched thin. Busy season has become synonymous with burnout and staffing strain. AI alone won’t fix that, but AI put to work in the right way—through agentic AI that is deeply embedded into tax workflows—can fundamentally change the equation. 

The goal is not to replace professional judgment, but to clear away the manual, time-consuming tasks that prevent professionals from using that judgment to its fullest. Ready to Review gives firms a single, cloud-based, scalable platform that automates the gather and tax prep stages of the workflow—helping firms manage more individual returns with existing staff while maintaining quality and control. 

We’re already seeing the impact. Indiana-based CLH CPAs & Consultants participated in our early adopter program and saw the potential for transformative time savings. As Bob Lange, Partner at CLH, told us: “Reducing return preparation time by approximately an hour on each simple 1040 is significant in terms of efficiency gains. For firms like ours, these time savings will be a game changer.” 

I’ve said before that I expect firms will ultimately pair each CPA with at least one virtual agent. Ready to Review is a tangible step in that direction. It brings that 1:1 vision closer to reality by embedding Gather and Tax Preparer AI agents directly into the 1040 workflow in a way that’s responsible, auditable, and grounded in trusted Thomson Reuters tax content and compliance expertise. 

As solutions like Ready to Review become part of the day-to-day fabric of tax work, we’ll see fewer 80-hour weeks and more time spent on the nuanced, client-focused work that truly differentiates firms. We’ll make room for new talent who are excited about a career that leans into analysis and advisory rather than pure grind.  

Ready to Review is now generally available in the United States for 1040 use cases, and its launch marks an important milestone in our broader journey with agentic AI on the CoCounsel Tax platform. It’s one more way we’re helping firms modernize in a way that is practical, grounded, and built for the realities of tax season. 

This post was authored by Elizabeth Beastrom, President of Tax and Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters.