Scaling Enterprise AI Doesn't Have to Be Taxing

Founded in 1965 and headquartered in Augusta, Georgia, TaxSlayer has emerged as one of the best-known, easy-to-use IRS-approved online tax filing platforms for consumers and businesses. By 2022, TaxSlayer was annually processing more than 10 million federal and state e-filed tax returns with refunds of nearly $15 billion.

However, as early as 2019, the company identified a few key challenges to their future growth:

• Seasonal Scalability: TaxSlayer consumer and pro websites, network resources, and data centers might receive traffic from one thousand user sessions on a cold day in November but often host over one million user sessions during a typical week in late March or early April, peaking on Tax Day (April 15).
• Seasonal Staffing: TaxSlayer staffing levels more than double in size during the busy January to April tax season. Individual onboarding and team training must occur within a compressed timeline.
• Customer Satisfaction : TaxSlayer data teams track metrics based on customer satisfaction best represented by the speed and accuracy of processing not only returns, but also countless reliable knowledge base and chat bot answers to customer questions ranging from the ordinary to the most complex scenarios for CPAs and tax professionals.
• Fraud Analysis: To address the persistent risks of identity theft and tax fraud, TaxSlayer systems must provide built-in protection against fraud and misuse by applying the latest cybersecurity and fraud-detection capabilities.

In subsequent years, as automation and learning models rapidly progressed, leadership at TaxSlayer envisioned a path forward where new AI capabilities would be leveraged to address these challenges.