Pre-filling tax returns: an AI that sorts the client's documents on servers in Switzerland
March. Two hundred clients, each with an envelope: salary certificates, bank statements, pillar 3a certificates, a bundle of medical bills, and a sticky note saying "the rest is in the email". Every figure has to be found, added up and typed into the right field. Which part of that needs your expertise?
The short answer: a local model reads the client's documents and proposes each figure for the return, with the document and page it came from, and a person at the firm checks before the client signs or confirms it. It runs on servers in Switzerland, Meow's or your own, so a client's whole financial life doesn't go through a public AI service. How much it prepares well is something to test, on last year's returns.
Checked against the law on 30 September 2026
Which figure goes where?
- Sensitive data
Medical bills, donations and church tax can reveal health and religious views, which the Data Protection Act treats as sensitive (art. 5 lit. c).
- Every figure traced
For each figure it proposes, the model names the document and the page it came from, so a person checks it at a glance.
- The client confirms
For the direct federal tax, the taxpayer fills in the return truthfully and completely and signs it personally, or confirms it electronically when filing online (DFTA, arts. 124 and 104a). The model prepares; people decide.
How to test it
0 of 8 checked
Clients who agreed, with the documents they sent and the return you filed: that's your answer key.
Salary certificates, bank tax statements, pillar 3a and pension fund certificates, invoices for deductions.
For your canton's software: which figure from which document goes into which field.
Let the model propose each figure with its source, and compare with the return you filed.
A right figure in the wrong field is an error too.
Where a bank provides an electronic tax statement your software accepts, import it rather than reading it.
Photos of certificates, handwritten notes, documents in another language.
The firm checks; the client signs, or confirms electronically.
Ticked them all? The kit turns this into a test you can run next week: what it reads well and what to check, a document-to-field map to start from, the test plan, and what to count before sizing a server. Get the kit
What it reads well, and what to check
The kit covers six kinds of document. Two of them:
- A salary certificate
- One form across Switzerland: a good first test; check each figure lands in the field its numbered box belongs to.
- A bank's electronic tax statement
- Import it where your canton's software accepts it, rather than reading it.
- Pillar 3a and pension fund certificates
- In the kit
- Medical and childcare invoices
- In the kit
- Documents for a property
- In the kit
- A handwritten note from the client
- In the kit
Why it runs in Switzerland
A tax file is a client's whole financial life: income, wealth, debts, health costs, donations. Read on servers in Switzerland, operated for you, it doesn't pass through a public AI service.
What it needs
Text recognition for scans and photos, then a model on a server with a graphics card. Returns come in waves, so size for the busiest weeks, not the average: the Meow Academy's planner shows how models fit on hardware.
Where does your firm stand?
The self-check takes two minutes and says which first step fits. Or talk it through in a free 15-minute call.
Book a free 15‑minute call
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What happens in 15 minutes
- 0–5 min
Your situation
What AI should do for you, and what it must never see.
- 5–10 min
What's possible
Which tasks can run privately, roughly what it costs, and what should stay human.
- 10–15 min
The next step
A test on your own documents, an assessment, or nothing yet.
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