Tax Preparer Institute

Quiz-gated staff training for tax firm owners

Productivity

Education

SaaS

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Hey Product Hunt — I'm Brian, a practicing tax firm owner in Colorado and the person who built Tax Preparer Institute. Here's the honest version of how this came to be. Two seasons ago I brought on two seasonal preparers for the October extension push. I did what most small firm owners do: I spent a few hours walking them through our process, answered their questions as they came up, and figured they were ready. They said they were ready. They weren't. The errors were the kind you catch at review — wrong filing status, misapplied dependent rules, a Schedule C that didn't account for SE tax correctly. Not catastrophic, but each one required my time to catch and fix. Meanwhile I had my own workload to deal with. By the third week of October I was working until midnight every other night, not because we had too many returns, but because I was functionally the backstop for staff who weren't fully competent yet. What I wanted was simple: a way to verify that preparers actually knew the material before they touched a return. Not "I went through the training" — but proof. A score. Something I could look at and say, this person passed the dependency rules section at 84%, they're ready for returns with complicated family situations. This person scored 61% on Schedule C basics, let's hold them to simpler returns for now. I couldn't find that. Everything available was either a full PTIN certification course designed for people starting their career (overkill, expensive, wrong framing for a firm owner), or generic HR onboarding tools that had no tax content at all. So I built it for my firm. And then I productized it. What Tax Preparer Institute actually is: A three-level curriculum covering what preparers need before they touch a return — filing status, income types, deductions, credits, retirement, and beyond into more complex situations Quiz-gated progression: preparers pass each section at 80% before advancing. Every quiz pulls from a rotating question bank, so rote memorization doesn't work Each level ends with a final exam that earns a verifiable certificate An admin dashboard that shows you exactly who passed what, at what score, and when 25 lessons, current 2025 content, no filler What it isn't: It's not a full CPE platform It's not designed for solo preparers building a career from scratch — it's designed for firm owners who need their hired staff trained and tracked It doesn't replace your firm's specific workflow training. It handles the competency layer so that when you do your firm-specific onboarding, you're building on something solid Pricing is $49/seat/month or $399/seat/year. If you're on the fence, there's a full 3-day free trial with no credit card required. You get complete access to all three levels and the quiz system — enough to know whether it actually fits how your firm works. I'm genuinely interested in feedback from anyone in tax, professional services, or the training/LMS space. The firm-owner-as-buyer problem is one I haven't seen well-solved anywhere, and I'd like to know what I'm missing or what you'd want before building it into your own process. Thanks for the time. — Brian