Case study
Compressing multistate research and complex return preparation with CoCounsel Tax and GoSystem Tax RS
With agentic AI and open APIs working together, BLISS 1041 competes with much larger practices
Executive summary
A specialized accounting and tax services firm based in Nampa, Idaho, BLISS 1041 is dedicated to simplifying tax processing for pooled special needs trusts. Founded in 2022 by CPA John Skeen and technology leader Rich Marlatt, the firm was built on a shared mission to bridge the gap between complex fiduciary tax law and efficient tax preparation for trustees serving beneficiaries with special needs. With clients spanning 36 states and a lean team of two-and-a-half employees, BLISS 1041 relies on technology to deliver enterprise-grade tax compliance at scale.
Facing a recurring cycle of multistate research, complex return preparation, and intensive review, the team adopted two complementary Thomson Reuters solutions — CoCounsel Tax to accelerate research, document analysis, and standardized templates, and GoSystem Tax RS to provide enterprise-grade, API driven tax compliance at scale. Using CoCounsel Tax, Bliss 1041 uploads research templates and completed returns to get concise, citation backed answers and automated quality checks; using GoSystem Tax RS, they programmatically ingest large data sets and standardize complex filings. The result is dramatic time compression across research, preparation, and review, without sacrificing accuracy.
< 1 min
Client return processing once took 10 days
2.5 employees
Small firm competing with larger firms via AI
90% reduction
State tax research once took 2 months
The challenge: Scaling a specialized trust practice without adding headcount
BLISS 1041 serves trustees and beneficiaries in pooled special needs trusts, where accurate, timely compliance across many jurisdictions is essential. With clients across 36 different states, the two-person team faced a recurring, seasonal surge of technical questions and state by state changes that demanded deep research before returns could be prepared confidently. Rich Marlatt, Co-Founder and Chief Information Officer, said the cumulative burden was significant. "It usually takes us about two months to go through and do all of that tax research across those 36 different states." At the same time, certain engagements involved extraordinarily large data volumes. One cornerstone client required three employees, 10 business days to complete a single return — time the firm could not continue to spare as demand grew.
This deviation from a sustainable operating rhythm threatened service levels, profitability, and the firm's ability to scale. Research cycles delayed downstream preparation; preparation required heavy manual work and rework; and reviews pulled senior attention away from clients. The firm needed a way to compress research, industrialize preparation for high volume data, and standardize review — without increasing overhead.
As Marlatt explained, the team believed automation and APIs were the answer but could not find a tax platform willing to support an open, programmatic approach — until they engaged Thomson Reuters. "After looking around and doing some research, we found that Go System had the APIs that we were looking for that allowed us to grow."
The solution: Do better work, faster
Bliss 1041 adopted a two-pronged approach with Thomson Reuters. First, the firm integrated GoSystem Tax RS to standardize preparation and programmatically handle large, complex data sets. By extending the API's with GoSystem Tax, Bliss 1041 transformed a marquee engagement from a multiperson, multiday effort into a near instant, single operator process.
Second, the firm implemented CoCounsel Tax to tackle research, document analysis, and repeatable writing tasks. At SYNERGY, the team came across CoCounsel Tax, which they described as “the answer to the problem we were trying to solve.” They uploaded the multistate research templates they "already were using every year," enabling CoCounsel to run each template against authoritative sources and return concise, citation backed answers.
They also began uploading completed returns alongside their internal review checklists so CoCounsel Tax could perform initial review checks and surface areas that merited deeper human attention, allowing the team to focus only on potential issues.
The combination of CoCounsel Tax workflows and GoSystem's secure, API driven compliance engine gave the team an end-to-end path — faster research, automated data handling, and more efficient reviews, without disrupting established workflows.
“We were able to shrink the amount of time it took us from those 10 business days with three people down to under a minute with one person processing that. That was a huge time savings, and that allowed us to then grow our capacity and grow our company to where it is today.”
Rich Marlatt
Chief Information Officer, BLISS 1041
The outcomes: Faster answers, stronger reviews, and greater capacity
The cumulative impact of GoSystem Tax and CoCounsel Tax has been transformational for BLISS 1041. Annual state tax research that once consumed nearly two months is now completed in one to two weeks. A client engagement that once demanded three employees over ten days is now processed by one person in under a minute. The time savings have directly enabled firm growth — not through headcount, but through capacity.
“With AI and our ability to automate what we do, instead of growing and hiring on additional staffers, we’re able to accomplish the same tasks and we’re able to compete against much larger firms by leveraging AI. So we’re still just two and a half employees doing the same thing as a mid-market firm and competing against them.”
Rich Marlatt
Chief Information Officer
Quality assurance accelerated as well. By uploading checklists and final returns, "now we just have to review the responses that came back from CoCounsel Tax, which shrinks that amount of time down to just minutes," allowing experts to focus only on flagged items. Day to day client communications sped up, too. Responding to attorney clients used to require "an hour plus" of research and citation gathering; with CoCounsel Tax, answers and sources come back "almost instantly," reducing back and forth while improving confidence.
Security was a non-negotiable requirement for a firm handling sensitive trust and beneficiary data and CoCounsel Tax delivered. “With CoCounsel, we feel secure because it has a fence around our information. We can put our internal data in there,” Marlatt noted, adding that the platform’s architecture ensures client data is never used to retrain external models. That trust has enabled BLISS 1041 to extend CoCounsel Tax access to junior staff, using the platform as a first-line resource for questions before escalating to senior team members — improving accuracy, building confidence, and protecting senior staff time.
For Marlatt, the broader implication is clear. AI will take on routine returns and information gathering so experts can "spend significantly more time working directly with our customers… rather than spending that same time filling out a tax form."
