How it works
A year inside Keep is a loop, not a season.
- 01Works today
Remember
Persistent facts and relationships live in Keep: who you are, your dependents, your business and its EIN, your employers, your brokers, your contractors, your vehicles by VIN. Persistent does not mean immutable — an address change keeps the old address, its effective date, and which filings used it.
Today: For a person: from a Form 1040 filed with Gideon Tax, and a name, a date of birth, an occupation or an address you change in Keep. A business's own facts and vehicles are not kept yet.
- 02Works today
Receive
Documents arrive as they do in life: a PDF from a broker, a downloaded statement, a photo of a W-2, a scan of a K-1. The original is kept exactly as received. It is evidence, and it is never overwritten because the reader improves later.
Today: A PDF or a photo, up to 15 MB. A scan saved as a PDF is kept but not read.
- 03Works today
Read
Keep extracts a structured interpretation — employer, EIN, every box, tax year — and attaches a confidence to each field. The reading is what Gideon believes the document says. It is never treated as authoritative just because the parser returned a value.
Today: By ordinary software, not an AI: the same file gives the same reading every time, and it is not sent anywhere else to be read. W-2s and 38 information returns are read — amounts, dates, who issued them, the year. Codes and ticked boxes are chosen by you.
- 04Works today
Check
The reading is validated and compared with what Keep already knows: does the payer match a known record, is the EIN well-formed, are the amounts plausible, is this a duplicate or a corrected form, does it conflict with last year, is a recurring payer unexpectedly different?
Today: The payer against the ones Keep knows, the EIN's form, the tax year, the same file twice, withholding against wages. Not yet: corrected forms, and comparing with last year's.
- 05Works today
Confirm
You are asked about what matters — “We read box 1 as $54,218.37. Correct?” — not every character. Your confirmation or correction is recorded beside the reading, with who and when. Raw, read, and confirmed all survive.
Today: Every field of the form is shown for you to confirm or correct.
- 06Not yet
Carry
Durable tax attributes — carryforwards, basis, suspended losses, the adoption credit — are kept as records with history: origin, amounts used and by which filing, adjustments, remaining balance, expiry rules, supporting documents, review status.
Today: The ledger is built and tested. Nothing feeds it yet: no return hands Keep a carryforward.
- 07Works today
Prepare
Gideon Tax asks Keep for the facts, documents, verified interpretations, relationships and attributes it needs, applies the current year's tax law, and drafts the return. You review what changed, answer what is unresolved, and authorize. Nothing files itself.
Today: For Form 1040: who is on the return, the address, the employers, and every W-2, 1099 and 1098 Keep holds for the year, each on the page for its form. A draft you go through and change — credits, deductions and anything no document says are yours to add.
- 08Works today
Return
After preparation or filing, results flow back: finalized year facts, new attributes, consumed carryforwards, elections, the filed return, and any durable fact discovered along the way — each with its lineage, so a derived value can never overwrite the source it came from.
Today: For a Form 1040 filed with Gideon Tax: who was on it and who paid them, and its figures once the IRS accepts it. Carryforwards, elections and the filed return itself are not sent back yet.
Early access
What works today, and what does not yet.
This site describes the whole of Keep, because that is what you are deciding whether to trust with your tax history. Keep is open now and not all of it is built. Each line below says which.
Your account
An account of your own, with its own sign-in
Works todayFor a person or a household, or for a business. Keep's sign-in is separate from Gideon Tax's: a session there opens nothing here. Two-step verification with an authenticator app is offered to everyone, and a business account requires it.
Everything Keep holds, on one page, with where it came from
Works todayEvery fact, person, relationship and filing, each with its source and its history. A value that was replaced is shown under the one that replaced it, never dropped.
Change a fact, or correct one
Works todayA name, an occupation, a date of birth, an address. Keep asks whether it changed or was never right, because the history reads differently, and keeps what it replaced.
Decide between two values
Works todayWhen Keep holds more than one value for the same fact, it asks you which is right instead of choosing.
Adding a spouse, a dependent or a business's own facts by hand
Not yetToday these reach Keep from a return filed with Gideon Tax.
Documents
Upload a PDF or a photo, kept exactly as given
Works todayA W-2, any Form 1099, 1098 or 5498, a W-2G, a 1095-A, a K-1 and more. The file is never changed afterwards.
Read by ordinary software, not by an AI
Works todayAmounts, dates, who issued the form, the account number and the year are read from a W-2 and from 38 information returns. The same file gives the same reading every time, no AI service is called, and the file is not sent anywhere else to be read.
Confirm or correct every field
Works todayWhat Keep read, what you were shown and what you said are kept side by side. A reading is never treated as right because software returned it.
Questions where something looks wrong
Works todayAn EIN that is not an EIN, an unlikely tax year, a payer Keep has not seen before, the same file twice, withholding larger than wages.
Codes, ticked boxes and state lines read for you
Not yetToday they are chosen from a list or typed on the confirmation page. So is everything on a K-1 and a 1095-A.
Scanned PDFs, corrected forms, and comparing with last year's form
Not yetA scan saved as a PDF is kept but not read; a photo of the same page is. A corrected form is not yet tied to the one it corrects.
Removing a document
Not yetNot in the application yet. Write to privacy@gideonkeep.com.
With Gideon Tax
Connect the two yourself, and turn it off whenever you like
Works todayGideon Tax reaches an account only after its owner turns that on, and Keep shows what it has read and sent back.
A Form 1040 filed with Gideon Tax is remembered
Works todayWho is on the return, the address, the employers, banks, brokers and lenders — and, once the IRS accepts it, the return's own figures.
A Form 1040 prepared from what Keep holds
Works todayYou, your spouse, your dependents, your address and your employers are filled in, and every W-2, 1099 and 1098 Keep holds for the year fills the page for its form, box for box — whether or not you have filed with Gideon Tax before. It is a draft: you go through every page, change what is not right, and add what no document says — credits, deductions, other income. Nothing files itself.
Forms the return has no page for, and a payer's address
Not yetA 1099-K, a W-2G or a K-1 in Keep is named for you to enter where it belongs, not filled in. An employer's or payer's address is not read from a form, so you type it where the IRS needs it.
Business, employment and excise returns; other tax software
Not yetThe exchange with Gideon Tax covers Form 1040 today. Import from and export to other software comes after that.
Carryforwards
A carryforward kept as a record with its history
Not yetThe ledger is built and tested: an origin, every use and by which return, every adjustment, and a balance derived from that trail. Nothing feeds it yet — no return hands Keep a carryforward, and you cannot enter one yourself.
Business Keep
A business account, and its documents
Works todayA business can open an account and keep the forms it receives, read and confirmed like anyone's.
Entity records, employees, contractors, vehicles, assets
Not yetThe rest of Business Keep is designed and not built.
Leaving, and paying
A copy of everything Keep holds, in a documented form
Works todayOne file from one button: your records, their history and where each came from. Identification numbers leave by their last four digits. Each document's file is downloaded from its own page.
The files inside the export, and deleting an account in the application
Not yetToday an account is closed and its records deleted by writing to privacy@gideonkeep.com.
Billing
Not yetKeep is free while it is in early access. Nothing is charged until billing exists and you have agreed to the price.
Steps 2 to 5, on one document
Three states of one W-2, none of them lost.
- 1
Raw source
kept exactly as received
The W-2 as a phone photo, kept in a private store and reached only through a signed link that expires in minutes — never a predictable URL. Improving the reader later does not touch this file.
w2-northwind-2027.jpg2.1 MB · uploaded Feb 3 - 2
Gideon's reading
structured, with confidence
What the software believes the document says: employer, EIN, each box. Ordinary software, not an AI — the same file reads the same way every time. Every field carries how sure the reader was.
Box 1 wages: $54,218.37confidence: low on the last digit - 3
Your confirmation
beside the reading, never over it
You are shown what Keep read and say whether it is right. Your answer — confirmed or corrected — is recorded beside the reading, with who and when.
Box 1 wages: $54,218.87corrected by taxpayer · Feb 3
Step 7, from your side
Not yetWhat a returning year asks of you.
The year-over-year review is designed and not built. For a returning customer, Keep is to identify:
- what remains unchanged
- what likely carries forward
- what tax attributes remain available
- what current-year documents have arrived
- what requires confirmation
- what expired, and what was consumed
- what is new
- what differs from the previous year
- what appears inconsistent
- what remains unresolved before preparation
A missing form is a review signal, not proof it exists. “Last year you received a 1099 from this payer. Did the relationship end, or are you still waiting?”
Already known
- You and your spouseidentity, address, filing status
- Two dependentsunchanged since 2025
- Employer: Northwind Freightthird year
- Brokerage: two accountsrecurring 1099-B
- Adoption credit carryforward$4,120 remaining
Arrived this year
- W-2 · Northwind Freightread from a phone photo
- 1099-DIV · Bramble Capitalmatches the known payer
- 1098 · mortgage interestmatches the known lender
- 1099-INT · Harbor Credit Unionnew payer
Changed
- Addressmoved in March — old one kept for 2025
- Withholding up 6%vs. last year's W-2
- One 1099-B missingCedar Ridge Brokerage sent one last year
Please confirm
- W-2 Box 1 read as $54,218.37low confidence on one digit
- Did the Cedar Ridge account close?or is the form still coming?
- New payer Harbor Credit Unionkeep as a recurring relationship?
A missing form is a review signal, not proof it must exist. Nothing here is filed until you have reviewed the changes, answered the questions, and authorized the return.
North-star principles
What Keep will never do.
- Never make you re-enter a durable fact Gideon already knows unless there is a legitimate reason to reconfirm it.
- Never assume an old year-specific fact is still true merely because Gideon remembers it.
- Never reduce a multi-year attribute to a number copied from last year's form.
- Never discard the raw document after creating Gideon's interpretation of it.
- Never treat machine extraction as authoritative merely because the parser returned a value.
- Never make a future application reverse-engineer what Keep could have preserved when it was first known.
- Never lock your history inside Gideon when it can reasonably be exported in a useful form.
- Never let convenience weaken the security boundaries around taxpayer data.
Tax forms are temporary. Tax history is durable. Keep should securely preserve, verify and understand that history well enough that future returns can increasingly prepare themselves.
Every year of Keep makes the next one shorter.
Keep is open. Start with this year's documents, and keep your originals while it is in early access.
Free while Keep is in early access. The price when billing begins: $20 a year for a person or a household, $80 a year for a business.