How Current built an AI-native tax platform on Nutrient’s document infrastructure
Table of contents
“This product wouldn’t work without document editing. Our entire tax automation product, we need some way to display documents. That’s a very core part of it.”
Use case
Current set out to build an AI-native tax platform with document viewing, editing, annotation, and collaboration embedded directly into the user experience across its growing network of accounting firms.
Challenges
- Couldn’t find a single document solution that combined advanced annotations, full editing, and the performance needed for tax season workloads.
- Needed a consistent document experience across a rapidly growing national accounting platform.
- Had just six weeks and two engineers to deliver a production-ready product.
Solutions
- Embedded native document viewing, editing, annotations, and forms into the platform using Nutrient’s SDKs.
- Replaced the third-party PDF tools firms were paying for with a native viewer and editor.
- Went from first render to production with a two-person engineering team on an aggressive six-week timeline.
Results
- Launched a production-ready AI tax platform in roughly four months.
- Reduced software costs and eliminated multiple third-party document tools across participating accounting firms.
- Built AI tax workflows on a trusted document layer where accountants can review, validate, and confidently trust AI-generated work.
Current(opens in a new tab) set out to rethink one of the oldest workflows in professional services: tax preparation. The vision wasn’t simply to digitize documents; it was to build an AI-powered platform where accountants could review, edit, collaborate on, and validate complex tax information in one place. As Chief Technology Officer Tucker Haas began building that vision, he quickly realized something: The hardest part wasn’t the AI. It was creating a document experience accountants could trust every day.
Technology hasn’t kept pace with complexity and demand
In accounting, documents are the lifeblood of the work. Every tax return depends on W-2s, 1099s, supporting schedules, financial statements, and client records. Accountants spend much of their day reviewing those documents, extracting information, validating numbers, and ultimately producing a return.
Despite advances in technology, much of that work still happens across disconnected tools. Accountants move between one application to view a document, another to edit or annotate it, and a separate paid tool for the specialized markup their work requires. Every one of those tools comes with its own license, its own workflow, and its own learning curve. The cost adds up quickly, not just in software spend, but in friction.
Current recognized that the bottleneck wasn’t preparing tax returns: It was the document experience surrounding them. Viewing, editing, annotating, and validating documents remained fragmented across multiple applications. If the company wanted to reinvent tax preparation with AI, documents couldn’t remain an afterthought. They had to become a native part of the product itself.
Why open source couldn’t clear the bar
The vision was ambitious, but the timeline was limited. Haas’s team had six weeks to deliver a working product for extension tax season. Two engineers were responsible for building a document experience accountants would spend most of their day inside. There was no time to assemble a production-grade platform from multiple open source libraries or build document infrastructure from scratch. That’s when Current found Nutrient.
One seemingly small requirement quickly became the deciding factor: calculator tie-outs. Accountants build detailed calculation tapes as evidence of their work, and then need to reopen, edit, and preserve those calculations throughout the review process. Storing and retrieving that amount of custom data inside a PDF isn’t a standard annotation problem, and it wasn’t something the open source options handled well. Nutrient did. That solved the hardest problem in the evaluation and gave the team confidence the rest would follow.
That same flexibility carried through the rest of the implementation. While the custom calculator annotation required deeper work, the standard document capabilities — viewing, rotation, checkboxes, forms, and editing — came together quickly. Two engineers completed the integration, allowing the team to spend its time building tax automation instead of document infrastructure. The speed of the initial implementation impressed Haas.
“The initial implementation of just displaying a document was 30 minutes. Super fast. Really easy to understand.”
A document layer to build on
Documents remain the interface between AI and human judgment. AI may prepare the return, but accountants still need to inspect every document, verify every number, and ultimately sign their name to the work.
Nutrient became that interface.
For Current’s engineering team, the payoff was immediate. After delivering a working product for extension tax season in just six weeks, the team followed with a full production launch before the start of the new year. Nutrient helped Current hit both milestones, enabling the small engineering team to focus on building the rest of the tax platform.
The benefits didn’t stop with Current. They extended to every accounting firm using the platform. Instead of paying for separate PDF viewers, editors, and annotation tools, firms now work entirely inside Current. Documents are collaborative, automatically saved, and immediately available to teammates. The old routine of downloading PDFs, emailing revisions, and juggling multiple applications simply disappears.
Just as importantly, Haas estimates the platform eliminates roughly $50,000–$100,000 annually in third-party document software licensing across participating firms, reducing both cost and complexity as the network continues to grow.
“Nutrient works for our team’s needs because it handles complexities and problems that we have run into when building document infrastructure. That way, we can focus on the things that are actually providing value.”
Results by the numbers
AI-native experience
Replaced disconnected third-party tools with AI-powered tax workflows on a trusted document layer.
Developer velocity
Went from first render in 30 minutes to production with a two-person engineering team.
Cost savings
An estimated $50,000–$100,000 saved annually in third-party document software licensing across participating firms.
Where Current goes next
Current empowers accounting firms to grow with access to enterprise-grade technology. With Nutrient providing the document foundation beneath the platform, that vision is now taking shape. As AI assumes more of the preparation, documents become even more important, not less. They’re where AI hands work back to people: to review, validate, collaborate, and ultimately make the decisions their clients depend on.
“Even if AI does all this work, you still need to present the information back to a human to be able to review it,” said Haas. “That’s what Nutrient has provided us.”
For Haas, document infrastructure isn’t supporting technology. It’s foundational infrastructure for the future of AI-powered tax.
