NASE President and CEO Keith Hall, Offers Tips on How Best to Use AI in This Year’s Tax Planning and Filing, While Offering a Warning: AI is a Tool, Not a Tax Advisor
DALLAS, TX – As AI adoption accelerates across nearly every industry, the American public—and especially small business owners—are increasingly turning to it for tax planning this year. Keith Hall, President and CEO of the National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE), is offering both practical guidance and a clear warning: “AI may be expanding access to financial knowledge for small business owners, but its real value comes when technology and human expertise work together—AI for speed and insight, people for judgment and accountability.”
Keith has outlined the changes and updates for filing beneficial returns to the tax code for 2025 tax returns. You can view them here.
“Like many other sectors, small business owners are increasingly turning to AI for operations, research, and even accounting tasks such as preparing their 2025 taxes,” Keith Hall, president and CEO of the National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE), the nation's leading advocate and resource for the self-employed and micro-businesses. “Many industry platforms now use AI behind the scenes for pre‑review and error detection, reinforcing—rather than replacing—the essential role of human tax professionals. AI is a tool, not a tax advisor. It can help small business owners gather information, explore potential deductions, and understand different tax scenarios, but it should never substitute for human judgment. Final tax decisions should always be reviewed by a CPA, an EA, or other tax professional, and especially by the business owner before filing.”
How Small Businesses Are Actually Using AI Today?Small business owners are adopting AI in three practical ways:
- Improving customer communication and marketing content
- Supporting long-term financial planning and forecasting
- Identifying and navigating grant and capital-access opportunities
But Small Business Must Also Consider These Items When Using AI During Tax Prep:
- Human Oversight Is Non-Negotiable: AI-generated insights are considered a first draft, not a final answer. Mistakes in tax preparation can be costly, so every output should be reviewed for accuracy, relevance, and compliance with current IRS guidance.
- Data Privacy Comes First: Business owners should avoid uploading personal or identifying information into AI platforms. The safer approach is to use AI to analyze raw, non-sensitive financial data or general scenarios.
- AI Helps Explain, Not File: Most small business owners use AI to better understand deductions, expenses, and “what-if” tax situations—like travel, equipment purchases, or hiring decisions. Filing should still be handled through trusted tax software or tax professionals.
- DIY Taxes Can Work—With Guardrails: For small businesses with stable, year-over-year finances, using last year’s return as a template and trusted IRS or association resources can be cost-effective. But owners should weigh the time, stress, and risk of errors against the value of professional help.
“A wave of ‘necessity entrepreneurs’ emerging since the pandemic has created strong demand for clear, accessible guidance on record‑keeping, reporting, and compliance—areas where AI can educate but never replace professional expertise. Younger and newer entrepreneurs are especially open to experimenting with AI, while many established or older business owners remain more cautious, often due to concerns about control, accuracy, and data security,” concluded Hall.
Hall was recently interviewed for MarketWatch on the growing use of AI in tax planning, and featured in an Associated Press piece outlining key tax changes and strategies for the year.
To Speak with Keith Hall, a Certified Public Accountant and Small Business Expert, about tax reform and/or this year’s tax season, please contact Kristofer Eisenla at [email protected]
Hall is also a new author of Hire Your Kid: The Sole Proprietor’s Guide to Creating a New Job, a new book that offers a timely, IRS-compliant strategy to reduce tax liability while investing in the next generation of workers. Hall draws on more than four decades of tax and accounting experience to explain how family-owned and self-employed businesses can legally employ their children, convert ordinary personal expenses into legitimate business deductions, and often save more than $5,000 annually in federal taxes. The approach, while long permitted under the tax code, remains widely underutilized by America’s smallest businesses.
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The National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE) is the nation's leading advocate and resource for the self-employed and micro-businesses, offering a broad range of benefits to help entrepreneurs succeed and to drive the continued growth of this vital segment of the American economy.
The NASE NextBizThing helps identify and connect our nation’s smallest businesses. Need small business help? Check out NASE’s Ask the Experts for advice or the NASE Minute for small business support. To help new and existing business owners with the costs of business ownership, the NASE also offers a series of financial calculators for budgeting and financial analysis.
The NASE is a 501(c) (6) nonprofit organization and provides big-business advantages to hundreds of thousands of micro-businesses across the United States. For more information, visit the association's website at NASE.org