Who this is for (and who it isn’t)
This workflow hits hardest if you're a single-member LLC, a freelancer filing Schedule C, or a W-2 employee with enough itemizable deductions to care. If your return is a pure W-2 standard-deduction filing, you'll find this overkill.
Not for: multi-entity structures, S-corp filings with payroll considerations, trust returns, or anything with K-1s from partnerships you don't control. Those need a tax professional and the agent is at best a data-gathering assistant.
The tax-prep flow
Three conversations over three weeks makes this manageable:
- Week 1: Schedule C categorization (the big one).
- Week 2: Quarterly estimates and tax liability projection.
- Week 3: Charitable + mortgage interest + property taxes + any other itemizables.
Breaking it into weeks lets you gather receipts and verify numbers between sessions.
Schedule C categorization
“Group every charge on my business card and business checking from Jan 1 to Dec 31 into Schedule C line items: advertising, office expense, supplies, travel, meals (50% vs 100%), utilities, home-office, legal & professional services, and other.”
The agent runs list_transactions for the full year and maps merchant + category to Schedule C lines. It'll get 90% right on the first pass; the remaining 10% are edge cases the agent flags for you to decide (was that $120 Amazon purchase office supplies or client gift?).
Export the result (ask the agent to render as a table you can paste into a spreadsheet). That table goes into your tax software or over to your accountant.
Quarterly estimates
“Project my full-year business income based on YTD trajectory. Apply a 28% effective rate (federal + state). How much should I send for the next 1040-ES?”
The agent computes projected gross, applies the rate, subtracts what you've already remitted, and gives you a number. You're responsible for the rate assumption; the arithmetic is the agent's job.
This is the single most useful tax-prep output for LLC owners and high-earning freelancers, because missing quarterly estimate payments means underpayment penalties at filing time.
Charitable giving and other itemizables
“List every charitable donation this year, plus mortgage interest and property tax payments.”
The agent filters by charity-sounding merchants + known mortgage-servicer descriptors + county property-tax payors. You'll still need the actual donation receipts from each charity for your records, but the agent's total is a sanity check against your pile of receipts.
What to hand your accountant
At the end of the three-week flow, you should have:
- Schedule C expense breakdown (categorized totals).
- Gross income total with a breakdown by source.
- Quarterly estimate history (what you sent each quarter).
- Charitable giving total with donee-by-donee amounts.
- Dividend + interest income totals.
- Any mortgage-interest + property-tax deposits.
That's usually enough to cut your accountant's billable hours in half. Save the rest of the bill for strategy conversations where they're earning it.