As we approach the final quarter of 2025, CPAs have a prime opportunity to deliver value to clients, guide year-end decisions, and strengthen advisory relationships. In this newsletter, you can showcase timely planning insights, legislative shifts, and new tools—especially leveraging Hive Tax AI research and planning tools—to help your clients act confidently. Use this as a model for your own client communication to build trust, show thought leadership, and capture new advisory work.
Suggested Sections & Themes for Your Year-End Client Newsletter
Below is a proposed outline and content ideas you can adapt. (You don’t need to include all sections—pick what fits your client base.)
1. Welcome / Context: What’s New in 2025 Tax Landscape
- Brief bulletin: “Key 2025 tax shifts you should know.”
- Highlight the passage and impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB / OBBBA), which permanently extends many TCJA provisions while introducing new changes for 2025.
- Emphasize that the end of the year is the time to act—delay is costly.
- Position your firm as proactive and forward-looking.
2. Top Year-End Moves Clients Should Consider
Offer bite-sized actionable tips in each newsletter. For 2025, some top ideas include:
- Prepay state / local / pass-through entity taxes (PTE / PTET)
Many states continue to allow entity-level tax elections so clients can bypass the SALT deduction cap. If your state allows it, prepaying state taxes or electing PTET by Dec 31 can be beneficial. - Maximize business expensing & depreciation
Section 179 and bonus depreciation remain powerful tools. Also, for 2025, the OBBB reset certain limitations (e.g. small-business expensing limits). - Review pass-through / QBI deduction thresholds
The 20% qualified business income (QBI) deduction remains, but thresholds and phase-outs have been updated for 2025. - Charitable contributions & gifting
Remind clients of charitable deduction rules, donor-advised funds, and the 2025 gift tax exclusion. - Retirement contributions & Roth conversions
Encourage clients to max out retirement contributions (IRAs, 401(k)s, HSAs) and evaluate Roth conversions if their income is favorable. - Review of estimated tax and withholding
With the increased standard deduction and tax bracket changes in 2025, many clients may underpay or overpay unless adjustments are made. - Catch up required minimum distributions (RMDs)
Remind clients age 72+ to fulfill RMDs before year-end to avoid excise penalties. - International, state, and nexus considerations
For clients with remote work, multiple states, or cross-border exposure, review whether nexus, sourcing, or withholding obligations have changed.
3. Spotlight: How Hive Tax AI Can Empower Smarter Year-End Planning
Use this section to explain how your firm is leveraging AI tax tools (like Hive Tax AI) so clients can see your investments in technology and benefit.
Key features and use cases:
- AI tax research & citations
Hive’s AI tax research tool lets us ask free-form questions, dive into IRS regs, tax court rulings, and state rules, and get inline references in seconds.
This accelerates our analysis and ensures we ground recommendations in current authority. - Tax return scanning and analysis
We can upload client returns into Hive’s Tax Return Analysis module: the tool flags anomalies, missed deductions, or planning opportunities and produces a summarized report you can review. - AI-driven tax planning strategy generation
Based on client inputs (income, assets, goals), Hive can propose alternative tax planning paths (e.g. converting to S-Corp, accelerated expensing, Roth strategies) with projected tax savings for comparison. - Client Q&A support & chatbot
Hive also offers 24/7 client support via a chatbot to answer routine tax questions. We monitor and review interactions to ensure accuracy and consistency with firm policy. - Agentic AI in tax workflows
Because Hive combines reasoning models, contextual understanding, and automated workflows, it acts as an “agentic AI” assistant—not simply a lookup engine. It helps us accelerate research, flag risks, and generate plans while we focus on validation, personalization, and client communication.
By using Hive Tax AI in our internal process, we reduce research time, bolster accuracy, and deliver more timely, strategic insights to you.
4. Case Study / Mini-Example
Include a short (anonymized) client scenario to show how the year-end planning played out.
Example:
“Client A is a high-income S-Corp owner with rising state tax liabilities. Using Hive’s tax research, we identified that electing the PTET in their state and accelerating capital purchases into 2025 would reduce federal + state tax by ~$28,000. Combined with Roth conversion during a low bracket year, the total tax benefit was ~5× the subscription cost of our AI tools.”
This illustrates tangible value and helps clients internalize “why it matters.”
5. Checklist: What to Do Before December 31
Offer a downloadable or printable checklist. Some items to include:
| Task | Notes / Timing |
| Review projected income & deductions | Mid-Q4 |
| Prepay state/PTET / entity taxes | Before Dec 31 |
| Finalize capital expenditures or lease reviews | Q4 budgeting |
| Max out retirement / HSA / 401(k) | Before payroll cutoff |
| Roth conversions (if applicable) | Evaluate in October–December |
| Review charitable gift strategies | Make gifts, get acknowledgments |
| Confirm withholding / estimated tax | Adjust via Form W-4 / 1040-ES |
| Distribute K-1s / entity reconciliations | Early Q4 for pass-throughs |
| Review interstate / nexus exposure | Especially for remote / digital businesses |
| Upload returns into tax-scan tool | For analysis and advisory insights |
6. Closing & Call to Action
Wrap up with a note that you’re ready to help clients prioritize which moves make sense for them. Prompt them to schedule a year-end planning review. Emphasize your commitment to using advanced tools (like Hive Tax AI) to enhance their confidence and tax outcomes.
A sample closing might be:
“We’re here to ensure you make informed decisions before year’s end. Let’s schedule your 2025 planning review—together we’ll pinpoint which moves deliver outsized value and position you optimally for 2026. Contact us to lock in your time now.”
Why This Approach Works for Clients & Your Firm
- Timely & relevant communications build loyalty. Clients often perceive end-of-year newsletters as thoughtful value-adds—not just marketing.
- Demonstrates your tech edge. When clients see you using AI tools, they view your firm as forward-looking and efficient.
- Drives advisory conversations. The newsletter becomes a conversation starter: clients reach out with questions, leading to deeper planning engagements.
- Helps you scale. With research and analysis assistance from Hive Tax AI, you can manage more clients with consistent quality and speed.
Final Thoughts & Next Steps
As CPAs, year-end is not just “close the books”—it’s a chance to influence outcomes for your clients when it matters most. A well-crafted newsletter—timely, actionable, and technology-forward—can reinforce your role as trusted advisor. And by integrating an AI tax research and planning platform like Hive Tax AI, you amplify your capacity to deliver those insights efficiently and confidently.