Intuit ProConnect Tax

Intuit prices its cloud tax product by the return and publishes the whole ladder, which is unusual in this category and makes ProConnect the easiest professional package to budget before you sign anything. A single 1040 costs $82.46, and the unit price falls to $48.71 at 50 returns, $41.21 at 100 and $32.21 at 200. Business returns start at $97.46 and settle at $35.21 at the same 200 mark. All states and e-filing are inside those numbers. Sitting on top is a $210 User Access licence per person, capped at $2,100 for ten or more users, which is what actually unlocks e-filing, printing and firm reporting. Intuit also sells bundles against the same engine: Essentials 50 at $2,478, Essentials 100 at $3,842, Plus at $5,868 for two users and 200 individual returns, and Advanced at $8,462 for 400, with business returns charged on top of every one of them.

The product itself is browser-native rather than a desktop program with remote access bolted on, so there is no hosting invoice from a third party and no server to patch. It carries 7,200 forms and more than 21,000 diagnostics, pulls IRS transcripts and QuickBooks balances into the return, and includes two things firms normally pay for separately: Intuit Tax Advisor, which builds planning scenarios off the return data, and Intuit Sign with knowledge-based authentication at no additional fee. Conversions are offered from ATX, CrossLink, Drake, Lacerte, ProSeries, ProSystem fx, TaxAct, TaxSlayer, TaxWise, TurboTax and UltraTax CS across 1040, 1065, 1120, 1120S and 1041.

The trade-off is arithmetic. At 300 individual returns the per-return route costs roughly $9,700 with one user licence, against $2,605 for unlimited 1040s in ProSeries or $3,295 for unlimited everything in Drake Tax. Anything past 400 returns is "contact sales", so the number that matters to a 1,500-return practice is not published at all. The conversion story has a second gap: Intuit's own page says converted items vary by software provider and return type and instructs firms to review the data before filing, without stating what happens to prior-year depreciation schedules or loss carryforwards. Those are exactly the items that break in a migration, and they belong in the sales conversation rather than the first busy season.

Against Lacerte, the other Intuit product a growing firm looks at, ProConnect gives up some diagnostic depth and gains a real cloud architecture and a visible price. Against ProSeries the split is cleaner still: ProSeries is cheaper per return once volume is steady, ProConnect is cheaper when volume is not. Drake Tax Online is the closest direct rival on deployment and beats it on cost at volume.

Top-pick holds. Very few products in this category publish a full price ladder, run natively in a browser with no separate hosting bill, convert from eleven competitors, and include advisory and e-signature tooling in the licence. The reason to look elsewhere is volume, not capability.