Client Portal
The Tax Nucleus Client Portal
The software this practice runs on: five steps per return, a document vault foldered by tax year, and a research assistant that shows its sources.
Have a look
Before you sign anything, see what you would be signing into.
A demonstration account with an invented client. Nothing here is real information. It plays itself — click any section to explore it yourself.
What Tax Nucleus actually is
Tax Nucleus is the software this practice runs on, built by Tax Nucleus, LLC. Every return in it moves through the same five steps in the same order, and at any moment the screen tells you which step you are on and whose move it is. That is most of what it is for.
The rest is plumbing that only matters in March. Documents filed by tax year instead of buried in a mail thread. Signatures collected in the browser. A running list of what is still open, visible to both of us. Nothing about it is clever, and it is not trying to be.
Where this stands today
The public client login is not open yet, and I do not have a date for you. I would rather say that once, here, than post a launch month I cannot promise and then quietly move it later. This page is where the login will appear when it does open, and where I will say so.
In the meantime nothing about your return waits on software. Existing clients reach me through the contact form, and I handle documents, questions, and signatures directly. The five steps below are how the work runs either way. The portal changes where you watch it happen, not what happens.
Every return moves through five steps
A return has a sequence. Most people see the start of it and the end of it, then spend six weeks guessing about the middle. The portal shows the middle.
Each step reads Not Started, In Progress, or Complete, above a progress bar that says something like 3 of 5 steps done. When a step is sitting on me, you can see that. When it is sitting on you, you can see that too, which is the more useful half.
Engagement Letter
Scope and fee in writing, signed electronically, before any work starts. The number comes out of the complexity assessment at intake, not out of a conversation about what you can afford.
Questionnaire
The intake questions for the year. Married, moved, started a business, sold a rental, picked up a second state, had a child. These are the facts that change a return, and this is where they get captured instead of surfacing on April 10.
Tasks and Questions
A running list of what I still need from you and what I still need answered, each item open or closed. Nothing load-bearing lives only in somebody's inbox.
Review and Sign Return
The finished return, in full, for you to read before anything is transmitted. Your signature on Form 8879 is what authorizes me to e-file it. I would rather you take two days here than sign in ten seconds.
Invoice
The final fee, scored against the same scale you were quoted from, attached to the return it belongs to. If it moved up or down from the estimate, the reason is on it.
Ask NucleI
Ask NucleI is a research assistant inside the portal. You ask a tax question in plain language, it searches current guidance, and it answers with the sources cited underneath so you can expand them and read the authority yourself. That last part is the feature. An answer you cannot check is worth very little.
On cost, since the argument of this whole site is that your price is knowable in advance: it is included. Nothing in the portal meters against your bill, and no question you ask there adds a line to your invoice. There is a usage quota and a saved history, so what it told you in February is still there in September. I am not going to publish the quota number while the login is still being built, because it is one of the settings still being set. It will be in your account, on the screen, when the login opens.
The limits are worth saying out loud. It is a fast way to get oriented at eleven at night while you are staring at an IRS notice. It does not know the facts of your return, so it cannot tell you how a rule lands on your 1040. When the answer would change a number, ask me.
Your Files
Documents live in a vault organized in folders by tax year. Open 2025 and you get 2025: the W-2, the 1099-NEC from locum shifts, the Form 1098, the signed engagement letter. PDFs preview in the browser instead of making you download six files to find one, and multi-select handles a batch.
Every file carries a record of who uploaded it and when. That reads like housekeeping until March, when the live question is whether you sent me the K-1 or only meant to. It also means your documents never travel as email attachments, which is the least protected link in the chain and the one most firms still lean on. How the data is handled is on the security page.
Household accounts
A spouse's return, a college kid's first 1040, a parent whose filings you manage. Those sit under one login with an account switcher instead of three portals and three sets of credentials nobody can find in February. Each member keeps their own five steps and their own folders, and you move between them without logging out.
The rest of what is in there
- Client Profile: filing status, dependents, addresses, and the details I have on file
- Invoices in the portal, tied to the return they belong to
- A light and dark theme toggle
- A disclosures page covering how your information is handled
Security, without the adjectives
The portal logs you out after a stretch of inactivity. That is mildly irritating by design, and it exists because tax documents get opened on hospital workstations and airport wifi. E-signature covers the engagement letter and the return. Nothing sensitive moves as an email attachment in either direction.
You will also notice there is no phone number and no email address anywhere on this site. That is deliberate. It keeps the firm off scraper and robocall lists, and a written channel with a record beats a voicemail neither of us can reference in June.
I can't get over how easy it was to work with Hunter. He's great at communicating with me and answered every question I had.
If you are not a client yet
The portal is where you land after the first conversation, not before it. That conversation costs nothing and carries no obligation. If you want the sequence from the outside first, how it works walks through intake to filing, and the pricing page explains how the number in that engagement letter gets set.
Questions, answered plainly.
When does the login open, and how do I send documents until then?
I do not have a date, and naming a month I would then have to move is worse than admitting that. Until it opens, existing clients reach me through the contact form and I coordinate documents, questions, and signatures directly. Nothing about your return waits on the software.
Does the portal cost anything on top of my fee?
No. The number in your engagement letter is the number. Nothing in the portal, Ask NucleI included, meters against your bill or adds a line to your invoice.
Is Ask NucleI giving me tax advice?
No. It is a research tool that answers with citations you can open and verify, which makes it useful for orientation and for finding the underlying source fast. It does not know the specific facts of your return. Anything that would change a number on your return goes through me.
What happens to my documents after the return is filed?
They stay in the vault, in the folder for that tax year, so prior-year records are where you left them when a mortgage application or an IRS notice asks for them two years later. The retention rules behind that, from IRS Topic 305: three years is the standard period, six years if income was understated by more than 25 percent, and no limit at all if a return was never filed.
The first conversation is free.
Tell me what's going on and I'll tell you plainly whether you need me.
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