Intuit Tax Advisor

Nothing extra appears on the invoice for this one if the firm already files in Lacerte or ProConnect. Intuit Tax Advisor runs inside those two products, pulls a completed return forward as the baseline, and turns it into a client plan. The import is the whole point: Intuit's feature page says it brings across 100 percent of federal and resident state data, so income, deductions and revenue arrive without anyone scanning a PDF or typing figures into a second system. From there a preparer applies strategies out of a built-in library, things like hiring children, IRA contributions and bunching itemized deductions, or writes a firm strategy once and reuses it across clients. The output is a branded report showing the projected saving attached to each recommendation, plus quarterly estimate PDFs with penalty and interest already computed.

The fit is narrow and obvious. A firm on Lacerte or ProConnect gets planning for what it already pays, since the Lacerte pricing page now lists Intuit Tax Advisor as built in and includes unlimited advisory reports even in the $599 per year Fast Path plan. A firm on Drake, UltraTax, CCH Axcess or TaxAct gets nothing at all, because there is no path in other than a return prepared in an Intuit product. That is a hard boundary, not a limitation to work around.

The depth is where it stops short. Intuit's own disclaimer flags limits on state strategies, and the import is described as federal and resident state, which leaves a multi-state or nonresident client outside what the tool models cleanly. It is oriented toward the next filing year rather than a long horizon, so a firm that needs to carry a Roth conversion ladder or an installment sale across five or ten years, with AMT and net investment income tax tracked at each step, is not going to get that here. Neither is a firm that wants an entity-restructuring analysis rather than a list of scored strategies.

Against Bloomberg Tax's Income Tax Planner the trade is straightforward. Bloomberg computes federal, state and nonresident tax with AMT, capital gains, phase-outs and carry-overs out to twenty years, and Intuit does not try to. Against Holistiplan, Intuit wins on data fidelity, because it reads the return from the source rather than by OCR of a PDF, and loses on reach, because Holistiplan works with any return from any software and Intuit works with two. Corvee carries a far larger strategy library and covers entity work Intuit does not touch.

The tier moved up from strong-option. The reasoning is cost and completeness of input rather than sophistication. For the substantial share of US firms of 2 to 50 that already file 1040s in Lacerte or ProConnect, this is where planning should start, because the return import is free and complete and the client deliverable exists. Every paid tool in this category should be evaluated against what this one already does for nothing. The caveat sits in the lock-in: the value disappears entirely if the firm changes tax software.