As we enter the back half of 2025, tax and payroll leaders are hitting a familiar milestone: Quarter-End (QE) for Q2. For some, it's a time to check a few boxes and move on. For others, it's the only real opportunity to stabilize before the year-end surge begins.
And let’s be clear — year-end isn’t months away. It starts now.
With agencies tightening audit protocols, states increasing penalty enforcement, and notices piling up, the question is no longer “Are we compliant?”
It’s: “Are we audit-ready?”
As Rick Pinkerman, COO and Co-founder of Notice Ninja, put it:
“We got through Q1, we got through Q2 — now we’ve got to get serious. Time to look at what we did well and double down, and fix the stuff that slowed us down.”
That’s the mindset tax operations teams need at mid-year. Q2 close is your last real chance to fix broken processes, streamline systems, and clean up data before the fourth quarter becomes a logistical firefight.
Q3 flies. Q4 burns. What you solve at mid-year defines how painful—or how painless—your December will be.
Use Notice Ninja’s free Tax Notice Audit Tool to identify workflow breakdowns, missed deadlines, and compliance gaps across entities, notices, and jurisdictions.
Automate the Repeatable
Manual processes are fine—until they’re not. Re-keying data, chasing down POA forms, emailing PDFs across departments… they may work during quieter months, but they don’t hold up under year-end volume.
That’s why many teams are turning to NOTICENINJA, the tax notice management platform. It automates key compliance tasks across federal, state, and local agencies. From OCR scan-to-capture to real-time workflow automation, it centralizes everything your team needs to move faster—and with fewer errors.
The regulatory climate in 2025 isn’t forgiving. Here’s what your Q2 wrap-up needs to address:
If you wait until Q4 to answer these questions, it’s already too late.
The best tax ops teams aren’t waiting for Q4 panic—they're acting now, during the Q2 close, to get ahead.
They start with a structured QE review. Before the notices pile up, they’re identifying which processes caused drag, which returns created follow-up notices, and where manual tasks are costing time and visibility. These teams treat their Q2 recap like an internal audit.
They also invest in automation—not to eliminate people, but to elevate them. With tools like NOTICENINJA, they automate the intake, tracking, and routing of tax notices. They stop rekeying data and start managing notices by type, urgency, and jurisdiction. The result? Fewer dropped balls, less duplication, and a stronger compliance posture across federal, state, and local agencies.
Top teams also operate from a central source of truth. No more scrambling across inboxes or folders to find documentation. Amended returns, POAs, SUI rates, and EINs are tracked in one system. Audit packages are ready before they're needed. And when an agency calls, they don’t explain—they deliver.
Finally, these teams treat Q2 as the launchpad for Q4. They don’t just look backward. They look ahead—updating workflows, clarifying ownership, and using platform reporting to pinpoint jurisdictions that need attention now, before penalties show up in December.
What do they all have in common?
They're not hoping to survive year-end. They're building systems to own it.
Ignoring Q2 cleanup doesn’t just delay progress—it compounds risk:
These aren’t hypothetical issues—they’re recurring patterns we’ve seen in organizations that skip the mid-year review.
Source: Industry benchmarking, Notice Ninja customer data, and third-party compliance surveys, 2024–2025.
By locking in your QE review now and resolving gaps mid-year, you’re not just protecting your year-end—you’re strengthening your compliance operation for 2026 and beyond.
Start here:
The big question isn’t if you’ll face scrutiny. It’s when.
Start solving the problems this now—while you still can. Year-end isn’t far off.
Let’s make sure your team is ready.
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