MyCPAPro Calculator ↔ Intuit Tax Advisor — Integration Workflow

This document describes how the MyCPAPro Unified Tax Calculator (this prototype) and Intuit Tax Advisor (ITA) work together as complementary tools.

The two tools serve different phases

Our calculator's job is to win the engagement. ITA's job is to execute it.

Why both, not one or the other

ITA is excellent at what it does — strategy library, return integration, carryover tracking, state granularity. But ITA has two limitations relevant to MyCPAPro's positioning:

1. No cash-flow framing. ITA shows tax savings but not the gross cash story (e.g., "you write a $50K check, recover $15K, net cost $35K"). Prospects need that to make the decision.
2. No leverage / exit modeling. ITA doesn't model debt-financed energy investments with §465 at-risk, §1245 recapture, ITC clawback, or phantom-income exit scenarios. Our calculator does.
3. No participation pattern editor. ITA assumes a single participation status per strategy; our calculator lets you specify year-by-year (Y1 active, Y2+ passive).
4. Sales-document output. ITA's output is a deliverable; ours is a 13-slide sales-style proposal that doesn't reveal strategy names to cold prospects.

After engagement, ITA's data integration, state precision, and carryover tracking are far more accurate than what a single-page tool can produce.

The workflow

Phase 1 — Prospect / Discovery (MyCPAPro Calculator)

1. CPA enters prospect's W-2/RSU/business income, entity, passive income availability into the calculator (no return required — uses prospect-supplied estimates).
2. CPA selects candidate strategies from the categorized library.
3. CPA configures strategy parameters: investment size, participation pattern (year-by-year), financing, exit modeling.
4. Calculator produces:
   • ROI Sheet (categorized — no strategy names visible to cold prospect)
   • Proposal-Ready Report (13-slide sales deck)
   • Workbench view (internal — full detail)
5. CPA sends Proposal to prospect. Prospect decides.

Phase 2 — Engagement Signed (Hand-off to ITA)

1. CPA exports the calculator's plan as JSON via the Save Plan (JSON) button.
2. CPA pulls the prospect's prior-year return into ITA.
3. CPA cross-references the calculator's strategy selection with ITA's strategy library (see crosswalk below).
4. For each selected strategy:
   • Add to the ITA plan with the parameters from the calculator's JSON.
   • Validate ITA's calculations against the calculator's projections — discrepancies usually trace to state precision (calculator uses top-rate; ITA uses actual brackets) or to participation timing.
5. ITA generates the implementation tasks and the client-facing deliverable.

Phase 3 — Implementation + Filing (ITA + Lacerte / ProConnect)

1. ITA tracks each strategy through implementation deadlines.
2. Carryovers (Form 8582 passive losses, Form 3800 ITC carryforward, Form 8801 AMT credit, Form 8606 IRA basis) populate from prior year and flow into next year's planning.
3. At filing, ITA pushes data into Lacerte / ProConnect.

Strategy crosswalk (MyCPAPro → ITA)

For each strategy in MyCPAPro's library, document the matching ITA strategy code. The 4 currently implemented strategies map as follows:

This crosswalk needs to be expanded as we build out the remaining 84 strategies in the library. Maintain it in this document.

JSON export format (Phase 2 hand-off)

Calculator's Save Plan produces a JSON shaped like:

{
  "meta": {
    "version": "1.0",
    "savedAt": "2026-05-12T14:00:00Z",
    "taxYear": 2026,
    "source": "MyCPAPro Unified Tax Calculator"
  },
  "profile": { ... prospect info ... },
  "income": { ... },
  "businessOwner": { ... },
  "strategiesEnabled": { "backdoorRoth": true, "solarITC": true, ... },
  "strategyParams": {
    "solarITC": {
      "invested": 50000,
      "participationMode": "passive",
      "participationPattern": ["active", "passive", "passive", ...],
      "loan": 50000,
      "loanRate": 5,
      "loanTerm": 5,
      "loanAmortType": "interestOnly",
      "isQNR": true,
      "exitModeled": true,
      "exitYear": 5,
      "exitValue": 50,
      "exitType": "sale"
    }
    // ... other strategies ...
  },
  "feeStructure": {
    "yr1Tier": "advisory",
    "yr1Mode": "preset",
    "maintTier": "essentials",
    "maintMode": "preset",
    "isDeductible": true
  },
  "computedSnapshot": {
    "strategies": [ /* full computed strategy results */ ],
    "tierRecommendation": { /* ... */ }
  }
}

A team member can read this JSON to extract strategy parameters and enter them into ITA manually. If ITA ever opens an import API, this JSON should be straightforward to map programmatically (each strategyParams.X block has the parameters ITA needs for that strategy).

When discrepancies appear between calculator and ITA

Expected sources of discrepancy and how to resolve:

Where to NOT use one or the other

Don't use the calculator for:

• Filing-quality calculations
• Final client deliverables that go into actual returns
• Carryover tracking between years
• State-specific bracketed calculations

Don't use ITA for:

• First prospect call (no return available)
• Sales proposals with anonymized strategies
• Cash-flow-aware leverage modeling
• Per-year participation pattern modeling
• Exit-scenario phantom-income risk surfacing

Next steps to deepen the integration

1. Expand the strategy crosswalk. As we build out the remaining 84 MyCPAPro strategies, document each ITA equivalent ID.
2. Standardize the JSON schema. If ITA publishes an import format, align our Save Plan output to match.
3. Build a Phase-2 hand-off PDF. Generate a one-page "ITA Setup Sheet" from the calculator JSON that lists exactly what to enter into ITA, line by line.
4. Reconcile checklist. Build a checklist for the team member who transitions a prospect from calculator to ITA — what to verify, what's expected to differ.