How the HIVE AI Financial Planning Assistant Helped Jeffrey Orr, a CPA, Complete a Complex (Investing in Puerto Rico) Client Case within Half of the Budgeted Time
Background
Jeffrey Orr is a CPA based in California that specializes in providing financial planning and tax filing services for individuals and small businesses. One of Jeff’s clients has a manufacturing business in California. He is considering moving his business and personal residence to Puerto Rico to take advantage of a tax incentive for investing in Puerto Rico.
The client is also seeking a plan for transition his company to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) by 2024 and then sell the company in 2030. The company currently employs 14 individuals with a total payroll of $400,000. The business is not utilizing stock options. It also encountered a payroll audit for the year 2020 with underpaid taxes. The client would like to avoid similar legal problems in the future. Jeff was hired to prepare a proposal that outlines the tax implication of the move to Puerto Rico.
The Challenge
Jeff will need to perform extensive research and draft a proposal for the client. The client has allocated a budget of only six hours for Jeff’s time. He also requires the information within 24 hours. The proposal must encompass potential tax incentives, compliance requirements, and an assessment of the tax savings impact. Jeff is experienced in this scenario. He is familiar with the IRS codes that cover crucial aspects and benefits for investing in Puerto Rico for both corporate and individual investors.
The challenge is that Jeff needs to quickly research this technical topic and provide a comprehensive proposal tailored to the client’s circumstances and goals in a very short turnaround time.
For these kind of projects, Jeff would typically start with Google search and identify the respective tax codes. Then, he would research each tax code on various sites. Finally, he’d put the proposal together. In his experience, this process can easily take 6-8 hours.
The Solution/Impact
For this scenario, Jeff decided to try HIVE’s AI Financial Planning Assistant to generate a comprehensive proposal for relocating the clients business operations to Puerto Rico. This includes plans for implementing an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) by 2024, with a goal of a complete sale by 2030.
First, Jeff inputs the client’s goals, financial situation, and course of action into HIVE’s Financial Planning component. Several minuted later, the AI assistant generates a full plan.
Jeff then reviews the AI-generated plan. He quickly detects important information on the unique tax incentives available under Act 20 and Act 22 (now part of Act 60) for businesses and individual investors. He then uses this information to dig deeper into the client’s case. Finally, he modifies the A-generated plan to provide a comprehensive proposal for the client. He was able to perform this work in about 3 hours — within half of the budgeted time frame.
Not only did HIVE’s AI assistant generate results within minutes, the report closely aligned with Jeff’s own suggestions for the client. Jeff was able to leverage the AI-generated results to help provide exceptional service to his client.
“HIVE has saved me 75% of the time it normally takes to go through the financial planning process.”
Jeffrey Orr, CPA
HIVE’s AI Financial Planning Assistant helped Jeff:
- Collect client information and financial goals: HIVE AI was able to capture Jeff’s client’s personal and financial circumstances, identify business goals, and analyze the current financial course of action.
- Create a comprehensive financial plan: This plan included tax minimization strategies, entity structure consulting, state and local tax planning, and employee benefit/compensation planning.
- Conduct extensive research: Jeff needed a detailed publication on Puerto Rico’s Act 60 and other potential requirements.
- Develop action plans: Jeff used the suggested action plans to augment his final recommendations.
- Presentation material: Jeff was able to copy and paste the results of the financial plan and use them on the client PowerPoint presentation.
Conclusion
Unlike traditional financial planning software tools which only tackle certain financial planning components and specific tasks of financial planning, Hive AI Financial Planning Assistant is truly a versatile “assistant” to human CPA and financial advisors who can run through comprehensive financial planning components and tackle all the steps of the financial planning process within minutes vs. many hours by human assistant while human experts can focus on high value and high impact client relationships and plan delivery.
References
Download: Financial Plan Created by HIVE & CPA
Research on Puerto Rico’s ACT 60
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