Your Tax Notice Resolution Agent Finds the Payment the Agency Missed
The AgentWorks Tax Notice Resolution Agent takes the payment tracing behind balance-due notices off your CPAs and tax staff. When a client forwards a letter saying they owe, the agent replies to the client, identifies the notice, lines up the return with every payment the client actually made, finds the one the agency missed or misapplied, and drafts a response with the proof attached for the CPA to review, so your people keep advising clients instead of digging through bank statements.
What it takes off your plate
Many notices are not about the return at all. They are about money that was paid and not credited: an estimated payment applied to the wrong year, an extension payment posted to the wrong form, a payment made under the owner's number instead of the business's. The client is sure they paid. The agency says they did not.
Sorting that out is slow, manual work. Someone pulls the return, the account transcript and the client's bank records, then matches each payment by date and amount until the gap shows up. Notice codes change, the response deadline sits in one person's calendar, and if penalties were assessed, a narrative for abatement has to be written too. Meanwhile the client calls asking whether they should just pay it, and the answer depends on research nobody has had time to do.
What the Tax Notice Resolution Agent does, step by step
The Tax Notice Resolution Agent starts with the client, because the first question is always whether to pay.
- Replies to the client. When a notice comes in, the agent acknowledges it, names the response deadline, and tells the client not to pay anything until the firm has reviewed it, per your firm's standing guidance.
- Asks for proof of payment. It requests the bank confirmations or cancelled checks for the period the notice covers and follows up until they arrive.
- Keeps the client informed. Once the CPA approves and sends the reply, the agent tells the client what was sent and what to expect next.
- Identifies the notice. Behind those messages, the agent reads the correspondence, identifies the notice type, tax year and amount claimed, and records the deadline on the engagement.
- Matches payments. It lines up every payment on the account transcript against the client's bank records and the payments shown on the return, and marks any payment missing, misapplied or credited to another year.
- Calculates the correct balance. From the matched payments it shows what, if anything, is actually owed, and where the agency's figure differs.
- Drafts the response. It prepares the letter asking the agency to apply the payment correctly, with the confirmation attached, plus an abatement request where penalties followed from the error, and routes both to the CPA.
The CPA decides how to respond and reviews, edits and signs every letter. The agent traces and drafts; the professional decides.
Where the work is recorded
An agent that cannot record its results is a chatbot. The Tax Notice Resolution Agent writes its work where your team already looks.
In the CRM, each client's record holds the notice, every message to and from the client, the deadline and the status. When the client calls, whoever answers sees exactly where things stand and continues from the last message. The notice and the payment proof are filed where the Document Agent keeps client files.
In the tax software, the payment match, the corrected balance and the draft reply sit with the return for that year. The next morning the CPA opens one list of notices ordered by deadline, each showing whether the payment was found. When the root cause was an estimate paid to the wrong period, next year's payments can be set up correctly by the Estimated Tax Calculations Agent.
What your people do instead
Your CPAs review the evidence, sign the reply and call the client to explain what happened and how it will be fixed. That call, not the research, is what the client remembers.
Your tax staff stop reconciling transcripts to bank statements by hand and move on to preparation and planning. Client businesses hear from the firm quickly and learn that a letter does not always mean a bill. Client service and client satisfaction are the human job. The AgentWorks Tax Notice Resolution Agent keeps the tracing, the drafts and the deadlines moving around them.
Find out where to start
Notice resolution is one workflow; your firm may have a louder one, like tax intake or the month-end close. The free Industry Assessment for accounting firms shows which workflow an agent should take first, and the accounting industry page walks through the agents built for CPA practices.
See where the Tax Notice Resolution Agent would start in your accounting business.
I'm Rachel, the Accounting ambassador here. The free Industry Assessment reads your website and asks how calls, follow-ups and records happen today, then shows the first workflow worth handing to an agent like this one — and what your team gets back. Leave your email and I'll send the link.
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