Private AI for CPA Firms

What does IRC §7216 require when a CPA firm uses AI?

IRC §7216 does not prohibit AI — it prohibits disclosure of tax return information without consent, and it is a criminal statute. Section 7216 makes entering client tax information into a third-party AI tool a likely disclosure, carrying penalties of up to $1,000 and a year of imprisonment per knowing violation, with a civil companion (§6713) that adds $250 per violation and requires no intent at all. What the statute leaves you is a narrow set of compliant paths: signed per-client consents that name the vendor, sanitized inputs, or AI that runs inside the firm so no third-party disclosure ever occurs.

Private deployment is the path where the disclosure question disappears entirely. When the AI runs inside the firm's own environment, client tax information never leaves the firm and never reaches a third party, so there is no §7216 disclosure to consent to in the first place. For the full breakdown of the statute, why the consent path is harder than firms expect, and the three compliant ways through it, read our deep dive on IRC §7216 and AI tools for CPA firms.

How is Deepvine different from ChatGPT or Copilot for a CPA firm?

The difference is the environment: Deepvine runs in your infrastructure instead of a shared public cloud. General assistants like ChatGPT and Copilot are powerful, but pasting client tax information into them is the exact habit that triggers an IRC §7216 disclosure — they were built for the open internet, not for a firm that answers for where every return travels.

Deepvine connects to your document management system, tax and practice software, email, and Slack, and it is backfilled with your firm's own engagement history so its answers come from your work product rather than the public web. Your data stays in your control, and your inputs are never used to train models that other organizations share. The result is an assistant that actually knows your clients, your engagements, and your institutional history — not a generic one you have to keep re-explaining your practice to.

What can staff actually do with it?

Staff use Deepvine to find and reuse the firm's own knowledge without hunting through folders or emailing colleagues who may have left. Because the system is grounded in the firm's actual work product, every answer points back to its source.

• Engagement history retrievalsurface the workpapers, memos, and prior-year positions the firm has already documented for a given client.
• Institutional knowledge from departed partnersrecover the reasoning and client history that used to live only in one person's head.
• Prep and review contextpull the background a preparer or reviewer needs to understand an engagement quickly.
• Grounded draftingdraft client letters and memos anchored in the firm's own work product rather than generic language.
• Source-cited answers in Slackask a question where the team already works and get an answer with citations back to the underlying workpapers.

What does deployment look like?

Deployment is a managed process, not a weekend software install. It moves through four stages: connection, backfill, daily diffs, and ongoing maintenance.

First we connect Deepvine to your existing systems. Then we backfill your historical engagements so the assistant starts with real institutional memory instead of a blank slate. From there, daily diffs keep the knowledge base current as new documents and messages are created, and we handle managed maintenance so your team is not responsible for operating the system. To see the mechanics in more detail, visit how it works and our security overview.

1. 1
   ConnectWe connect Deepvine to your existing systems.
2. 2
   BackfillHistorical engagements load so it starts with real institutional memory.
3. 3
   Daily diffsNew documents and messages keep the knowledge base current.
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   Managed maintenanceWe operate the system so your team does not have to.

Which CPA firms is this built for?

Deepvine is built for accounting and tax firms where years of workpapers, engagement files, client correspondence, and email hold institutional memory that is concentrated in a handful of people. That is where a firm has enough accumulated work product to make retrieval genuinely valuable, but not so much internal engineering that it would build this itself.

If your firm carries a deep client base, relies on prior-year work and documented positions, and would feel real pain if a senior partner retired tomorrow, this is built for you. You can read more about who we are and why we build this way on our about page.