Robert Kim
tax firm owner · Phoenix, Arizona
Press play — energetic intro, then the conversation
J This is Jennifer from the UpTax Podcast Room, and today I've got Robert Kim with me. Robert Kim, so great to have you on. R Thanks for having me on the show, Jennifer. I'm excited to talk shop — this is a topic I could go on about for hours. J Well, let's start with the basics. Tell our listeners a bit about your firm out in Phoenix. R Sure, so we're a mid-size practice, and we manage right around 1,500 individual returns a year, plus a decent chunk of small business work. It's a lot of moving parts. J Fifteen hundred returns is no joke. What does busy season actually look like for you and your team? R Honestly, it's brutal. January through April, we're talking sixty, seventy hour weeks. My staff is exhausted, mistakes creep in when people are tired, and every year I ask myself if we can even sustain this pace. J That's the story I hear from so many firm owners. So at some point you were staring down a big decision, right? R Right, we hit a wall. We had two options on the table — either hire an accountant, maybe two, and try to build out an offshore team ourselves, or find some kind of technology solution to actually automate the tax practice. J And building an offshore team sounds appealing on paper, doesn't it? Cheaper labor, more hands. R It does, until you actually price it out. Recruiting overseas, training them on US tax law, managing time zones, quality control — tax preparation outsourcing sounds simple but it's a whole operations job in itself. J So what tipped the scale for you? R Honestly, a colleague mentioned UpTax to me at a conference, and I was skeptical at first. I've seen a lot of software promise the moon. J I love that you're skeptical, because that's exactly how I'd want a CPA to approach this. So what changed your mind? R We ran a pilot with a batch of returns. The AI tax preparation engine drafted them, pulling data, applying the right forms, flagging deductions I might've actually missed myself. My reviewers just had to check the work instead of building it from scratch. J That's the core of what UpTax does — the AI drafts, your firm reviews and files. It's never replacing the CPA's judgment, just doing the heavy lifting upfront. R Exactly, and that distinction matters. I'm still the one putting my signature and license behind every return. But I'm not starting from a blank page anymore. J Walk me through the offshore review layer, because I think people get confused about that piece. R So after the AI drafts the return, there's a trained offshore review team within UpTax that does a first pass check for accuracy and consistency before it even lands on my reviewer's desk. So my staff is looking at a return that's already been through two layers of scrutiny. J So instead of you building and managing your own offshore team, UpTax basically hands you that infrastructure already built and tested. R That's the game-changer, honestly. I didn't have to recruit anyone, train anyone, or manage a team across the world. It was just... there. Ready to go. J Let's talk numbers, because I know listeners want specifics. How much time did this actually save you? R We tracked it pretty closely this past season, and it worked out to over two hundred billable hours saved across the firm. That's real capacity — hours we could put back into client relationships or advisory work instead of pure data entry and drafting. J Two hundred hours is basically another part-time employee's worth of work, without the overhead. R That's exactly the math I did. If I'd gone the traditional route and tried to hire a bookkeeper or an additional preparer to handle that volume, I'm looking at salary, benefits, training time, office space. UpTax cost a fraction of that. J So when you compare it directly — building an offshore team versus using UpTax — was it even close? R Not even close. The offshore build-out would've taken months just to get running smoothly, and I'd still be the one managing quality control. With UpTax, we were seeing usable drafts within weeks of onboarding. J I think that's the piece a lot of firm owners underestimate — the management overhead of running your own offshore operation. R Totally. People think outsourcing tax preparation offshore is just cheaper labor, but somebody still has to manage that team, train them on US tax code, keep up with changing regulations. It's a job in itself. J Whereas UpTax already has that built in as part of the platform. R Right, that's how UpTax supports CPA firms like mine — you get the drafting automation and the review layer bundled together, and my team just handles the final professional review and client relationship. J So if another firm owner was sitting where you were a year ago, trying to decide whether to automate their tax practice or go the traditional hiring route, what would you tell them? R I'd say do the math honestly. Compare what it actually costs to hire an accountant or build an offshore team from scratch against what a platform like UpTax charges. For us, it wasn't close, and the time savings alone changed how our whole season felt. J Has it changed the mood in the office too, not just the numbers? R Massively. My staff isn't burnt out by March anymore. We actually had time to talk to clients about planning strategies instead of just cranking out returns. That's the kind of firm I always wanted to run. J I love hearing that, because at the end of the day this is about giving CPAs their time and sanity back, not just processing more returns. R Exactly. And honestly, growing to handle more clients without hiring another accountant or bookkeeper felt impossible before. Now it feels realistic. J Robert, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today. R Thanks again for having me, Jennifer. Happy to come back once next season's numbers are in. J Please do. And for everyone listening, if you're thinking about how to automate a CPA practice without the headache of hiring or building an offshore team yourself, go check out UpTax. Book a demo over at uptax.ai and see what AI tax preparation can actually do for your firm.
