Self-employment is the segment where AI-native products have displaced incumbents most convincingly. The mechanism is simple: link bank and card accounts, and a model classifies every transaction against deductible expense categories continuously, so the return is largely assembled before filing season starts. Keeper reports users surfacing roughly 168 deductions on average this way.
Beyond deduction-finding, the category splits by how much of the compliance machinery is automated. Some products stop at bookkeeping and estimates; others run quarterly payments, S-corp payroll, and entity compliance as one system. Hnry goes furthest, deducting and remitting tax from each payment as it arrives rather than reconciling at year end.