TaxDome Pricing: Plans, Seasonal Seats and What to Ask on the Demo

Since 2 November 2026, new TaxDome firms pay no per-user price: one plan costs $1,500 a year for up to 150 active clients and 20 team members, so seasonal staff cost nothing extra. Earlier firms keep seat pricing ($800 to $1,200 per seat yearly, $100 monthly Pro seats, $500 four-month Business seats) until their first renewal from January 2027.

The title of this tutorial still says "seasonal seats" because that is what most firms search for, and because thousands of existing customers will keep them for months yet. The catch in the new model is that the meter has moved from people to clients. Extra active clients cost up to $15 each, AI is now a separate $200-a-month add-on, and directory listings still quote the old seat prices. TaxDome's pages print the rates; the sums below show what they mean for a real practice.

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TaxDome's client-based plan, line by line

These are the terms on the TaxDome pricing page and the help-centre pricing articles, read on 4 November 2026, in dollars. They apply to firms that sign up on or after 2 November 2026 and to existing firms once they move.

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So what does TaxDome cost per user now? Only what you get by dividing the total by the team. A five-person practice with 150 active clients pays $1,500, or $300 per person a year. The same five people with 400 clients pay $4,125, or $825 each. The per-user figure moves with the client count, not with hiring, which is the whole point of the change and the reason the old seat comparisons on review sites no longer work.

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Two limits matter for a seasonal firm. The 20-person cap counts people on the team at any one time, so a practice with 15 permanent staff and six temporary preparers in February is at 21 and outside the standard plan. And the pack prices between the published examples are not printed; the pricing page has a slider that shows your own figure, so take a screenshot of the number you are quoted.

What counts as an active account, in six cases

The price follows active accounts, so the definition is worth reading slowly. TaxDome's help centre says an account is a client: a person, a household or a business entity. It becomes active the first time, in your plan year, that your firm issues an invoice for it, creates a job for it, sends a chat message, or anyone creates an organiser or uploads a document, or a contact logs in or downloads a document. Emails your firm sends do not make an account active, and nor do documents added with the web migration tool. Once active, an account is covered for the rest of the plan year, and the count restarts at zero at each renewal.

Six cases from an imagined practice show how that lands:

1. A married couple with a return each, set up as one household with two contacts: one account.
2. A café owner with a personal return and a partnership return for the business: two accounts, because separate entities count separately.
3. A prospect who received three marketing emails in October and never replied: not active, and costs nothing.
4. A client moved across with the web migration tool, with last year's documents attached, who has not been in touch since: not active until something happens.
5. A client imported with a folder template that contains documents: active on import, according to the help centre, which surprises firms that bulk-import with templates.
6. A former client who logs in once in August to download last year's return: active for the rest of that plan year.

Cases 5 and 6 are the ones to manage. Archiving a client stops their contacts signing in, so an archived account stays inactive; the help centre suggests archiving clients you no longer work with. Do it before the renewal date, not after a stray login has already counted.

Four practices, priced on old seats and on the new plan

The question most owners actually have is whether the change makes TaxDome dearer for them. Here are four imagined practices, first on the cheapest legacy option for each (Pro seats on a one-year term plus $100 monthly seats for the temporary staff), then on client-based pricing. Client counts are chosen to match TaxDome's published totals where possible; practice B uses the on-demand rate, which is a ceiling because a pack would cost less.

Check two rows by hand. Practice A on seats: 3 x $1,000 is $3,000, plus 2 temps x 4 months x $100 is $800, giving $3,800; on the new plan, 400 clients is TaxDome's own example at $4,125. Practice B on the new plan: $1,500 for the first 150 clients plus 100 more at $15 on demand is $3,000, and a pack would bring that down.

Per client, the picture is sharper. A goes from $9.50 to $10.31 a client, B from $14.40 to $12.00 or less, C from $6.90 to $9.00 and D from $16.00 to $10.00. The pattern in these four is that the new plan favours firms with many people per client and penalises lean firms with large client books. Practice C, with about 111 clients per person, takes the biggest rise; practice D, with under 40, saves the most. Seasonal staffing, the thing the old pricing made expensive, has stopped mattering to the bill.

Where the break-even sits for your own firm

You can find the point at which the new plan overtakes your current seat bill with one line of arithmetic, using the on-demand rate:

Break-even active clients = 150 + (current seat bill - 1,500) / 15

Practice A: 150 + (3,800 - 1,500) / 15 = 150 + 153 = about 303 clients
Practice C: 150 + (6,900 - 1,500) / 15 = 150 + 360 = 510 clients

That figure is a floor. Packs cost less than $15 an account, so the true break-even sits higher; TaxDome's own 400-client price of $4,125 is already above practice A's $3,800, so A's break-even lies somewhere between about 300 and 400 clients. If your active count is well under your on-demand break-even, the new plan is cheaper whatever the pack price. If it is well above, ask for the pack price at renewal in writing and rerun the sum.

Count honestly before you run it. Pull last year's list of clients who had an invoice, a job, an upload or a portal login, not the full contact list, and remember that a household is one account while each business entity is another.

Seat plans and seasonal seats for firms already on TaxDome

Firms that signed up before 2 November 2026 stay on seat-based pricing, which TaxDome now labels legacy, until they move. The help centre's seat-based plans article gives these prices per seat per year:

This settles the argument that third-party pages have been having. The seat-based FAQ says monthly seats are Pro only and seasonal seats are Business only, billed every four months from the purchase date. Seats of the same type share one renewal date, and a seat added later is prorated to it. A competitor's guide published in November 2025 says Pro is the only plan with monthly licences for seasonal staff, which is true of monthly seats but leaves out Business's four-month seats. Software Advice still lists TaxDome from $800 a user a year with no free trial, which describes the legacy plans only.

For a firm still on seats, the old break-even rules hold until it moves:

• A Pro monthly seat costs $100 against $83.33 a month for a permanent Pro seat, 20 percent more. Ten monthly seats cost the same as a permanent seat, so a temp needed for more than ten months should get a full-term seat.
• A seasonal Business seat is $125 a month equivalent against $100 for a permanent one. Two four-month terms ($1,000) beat a $1,200 seat; three terms ($1,500) do not.
• Seasonal terms are bought whole. A six-month temp on Business needs two terms, eight months paid for six used.

When an existing firm moves, and the renewal-date trap

TaxDome's help article on moving gives two rules. If your renewal falls before 1 January 2027, you renew on your current plan and price for your entire next term. If it falls on or after that date, the firm moves to client-based pricing at that renewal, with a prepared offer shown under Team and plans first. Business-plan firms keep Client Care until their current licence ends; after that it is the $100-a-month add-on.

Take two practices identical to A. One renews on 15 December 2026, so it keeps $3,800 seat pricing until December 2027, through the whole 2027 season. The other renews on 10 January 2027 and moves at once, paying $4,125 if it has 400 active clients. A December renewal is worth $325 to a practice like A and nothing to a practice like D, which would be better off moving. If your renewal is close to the line, ask whether it can be moved, and whether a multi-year term is still available on a renewal before January; the move article says "entire next term" without saying how long that term may be.

Three realistic mistakes and what each costs

A seasonal seat that quietly renews. A Business firm buys a seasonal seat on 1 December for its first temp, so seasonal seats renew on 1 April. A second temp starts on 1 February and is charged two months, about $250, under the alignment rule. Both are needed until 15 April, nobody scheduled a reduction, and on 1 April both seats renew for another four-month term: $1,000 for a term running to 1 August, of which the firm uses two weeks. The help centre says reductions are scheduled for the next renewal date, so set them in March.

A pipeline that wakes up dormant clients. On client-based pricing, creating a job makes an account active. A practice with 520 client records, of whom about 400 still use it, runs a recurring pipeline that creates a "2026 individual return" job for every record on 2 January. All 520 become active on day one. If the firm had bought a pack to cover 400, the other 120 go on demand at $15 each, $1,800 for clients who were never going to file with it. Archive lapsed clients first, and point recurring pipelines at a tag such as "engaged this year", not at the whole list. What to automate first in TaxDome covers how to scope those pipelines.

Twenty-one people on a twenty-person plan. A firm with 15 permanent staff hires six preparers for January. On the standard plan that is one person too many at peak, and the answer is the custom plan by quote. Stagger start dates, or remove a leaver's access the day they finish, so the head count never crosses 20 at the same moment.

Where TaxDome AI sits in the price now

The AI position changed in the same week. TaxDome's help article on the AI add-on says it costs $200 a month per firm, every team member included, with a 14-day free trial available once per firm, and that from 5 November 2026 its features need the add-on or an active trial. TaxDome sells it in some markets only, so confirm your account can buy it. It works with any plan, legacy seats included, and is billed on its own invoice.

A quick sum frames the add-on. Twelve months is $2,400. For practice A with 400 clients that is $6 a client a year, or 40 hours of staff time at $60 an hour. If renaming and tagging save about six minutes per client across the season, it pays; if the team already names files well, the free checklist matching may be most of the value. Because the trial runs once, start it in a heavy document week, such as the first fortnight of February, when a test means something. TaxDome says it is SOC 2 Type II certified; before AI touches return information, settle the consent position in Section 7216 consent for AI tools.

What to ask on the demo

Bring this list to the call and write the answers down, with names and dates.

Plan and accounts:

• What is the pack price for our expected active count, and can we see the slider figure in a written quote?
• If we buy a pack and fall short, do we get anything back, or do the unused accounts simply expire?
• How do we see the running active count during the year, and can we get an alert at 90 percent of our pack?
• Does a bulk import with a folder template make every imported account active?
• What happens if we reach 21 team members for two weeks in February?

For existing customers:

• What is our renewal date, and what does the prepared offer say?
• If we renew before 1 January 2027, how long can the next term be?
• Can we schedule seasonal or monthly seat reductions now for the end of the season?

AI and money:

• Can our account buy the AI add-on, and can the trial start on a date we choose?
• Is Juno priced per return, per client or by subscription, and where is our data processed?
• Is there a trial or sandbox of the core plan, and can client data go into it?
• Are onboarding, data migration or training ever charged on top?
• If we leave, how do documents, notes and e-signature audit trails come out, and in what format?

A purchasing calendar for the first client-based year

This assumes a January to April season and is a suggestion, not a TaxDome rule.

• October or November: count last year's active clients and run the break-even sum; existing customers read their renewal offer.
• December: archive lapsed clients and fix recurring pipelines before the renewal date, then size any pack on the cleaned count.
• Early January: add temporary staff as they start, keeping the head count at 20 or fewer.
• February: start the AI add-on trial in a busy week and record the minutes it saves.
• March: decide whether to keep the add-on past the trial; legacy firms schedule seat reductions.
• May: compare the year's active count and on-demand invoices with the quote, and adjust before the next renewal.

A sample quote, checked line by line

Practice A on client-based pricing, with 400 expected active clients and the AI add-on kept from February to December:

Without the AI add-on the same practice pays $4,575, or about $11.44 a client. Any line left blank on an order form is where a surprise can live, so ask for each one to be priced or stated as "none".

The short version for each size: a solo preparer or small team with fewer than about 150 active clients pays the $1,500 minimum and should check that the old Essentials seat ($800) was not cheaper. A two-to-five-person practice with a short season and a modest client book usually gains from the change. A lean practice with a large book, like practice C, pays more, and its best move is an honest active count, a cleaned client list and a pack bought at renewal.

TaxDome pricing questions answered

How much does TaxDome cost per user?

For firms signing up since 2 November 2026 there is no per-user price. One plan costs $1,500 a year for the first 150 active client accounts and includes up to 20 team members, so the cost per person is the total divided by your team size. Firms on the older seat plans pay $800, $1,000 or $1,200 a seat a year until they move.

Do seasonal seats still exist?

Only on the legacy seat-based plans. There, Pro firms add monthly seats at $100 and Business firms add four-month seasonal seats at $500. On client-based pricing, temporary staff join the team at no extra charge as long as no more than 20 people are on it at any one time.

When do existing TaxDome customers move to client-based pricing?

At their first renewal on or after 1 January 2027. A firm whose renewal falls before that date renews on its current plan and price for the whole next term. TaxDome says each firm sees a prepared offer under Team and plans before anything changes.

Does TaxDome offer a free trial?

The AI add-on has a 14-day free trial, available once per firm. Neither the pricing page nor the help-centre pricing articles mention a trial of the core plan, and one directory listing says none is available, so ask the representative directly and get the answer in writing.

Further reads

• Canopy Pricing: Power-Ups, Client Credits and Add-On Costs — Canopy's equivalent breakdown, including per-client credits.
• Karbon Pricing: Team vs Business Plans and Where the AI Sits — Karbon's per-user plans and where its AI sits in the price.
• How Small Tax Practices Use AI Through the Busy Season — What temporary staff and AI actually do between January and April.
• How to Automate Client Onboarding in a Small Accounting Practice — Onboarding work that TaxDome's organisers and portal take on.
• How Much Does AI Cost a Small Accounting Firm? — How AI and software costs add up for a small firm.
• WISP for Tax Preparers: Add Your AI Tools Without Gaps — Records the AI tools you switch on in your security plan.
• AI Receptionist for Accounting Firms: Tax-Season Calls and Cost — Monthly cost ranges from vendor pages, a peak-versus-quiet sum, and word-for-word tax-season scripts for an accounting firm's phone.
• Tax Preparation AI Software: TaxDome, Canopy and ChatGPT Compared — TaxDome, Canopy and ChatGPT sit in different product categories. Compare their AI, their cost models and the consent step before return data goes in.
• Tax Preparation Automation: Source Documents to Software With AI — Map W-2, 1099 and K-1 fields, set accuracy checks and handle scans, so AI extraction feeds your tax software without re-keying errors.
• Canopy AI: Smart Tax Prep, Document Renaming and Beta Features — What AI Canopy offers a tax practice, which features carry a beta label on its pricing page, and how to test each before you pay.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: TaxDome pricing page, TaxDome AI page and help-centre articles on client-based pricing, active accounts, the client-based pricing FAQ, moving from seat-based pricing, seat-based plans, the seat-based FAQ and the AI add-on; Software Advice and Assembly TaxDome listings. Checked 4 November 2026.