Tax organizer
The questionnaire a firm sends before preparing your return. What goes on one, when firms send them, and why so many come back half-finished.
Resources
Tax and lending terms, explained
Tax and lending work runs on vocabulary that nobody explains to you. A client gets an engagement letter and does not know whether to sign it. A first-time borrower sees "clear to close" in an email and assumes the house is theirs. A new hire at a firm nods along in a meeting about DU findings and looks it up afterwards.
These pages define the terms that come up when documents move between people. Each one covers what the term means, when you run into it, and what it is actually for. No sales pitch, no filler.
Tax and CPA workflow
Filing season has its own paperwork about the paperwork. These four terms cover almost everything a client receives from a firm before a return gets prepared.
Engagement letter
The agreement that defines what your accountant will and will not do. Why it arrives before any work starts, and what to read twice.
Document request list
The list of files a firm needs from you. How it differs from an organizer, and why you often get both.
Prior-year return
Last year's return, and how much of it carries into this year. What preparers pull from it before asking you anything.
Mortgage and lending
A loan file passes through underwriting, compliance and closing, and each stage brings its own terms. Borrowers meet a handful of these. Everyone working the file meets all of them.
Form 1003
The Uniform Residential Loan Application. What each section asks for, and why one wrong figure sends the file backwards.
Desktop Underwriter
Fannie Mae's automated underwriting system. What a DU finding actually says, and what it leaves to a human.
Clear to close
The point where underwriting signs off. What still has to happen afterwards, and why it is not the same as done.
Automated underwriting
How an automated system assesses a loan file in minutes, and the decisions it does not make.
Loan origination system
The software a lender runs the file on. Where an LOS sits between the borrower, the broker and the investor.
Verification of employment
How a lender confirms you work where you say you do. Why this step stalls files more often than credit does.
TRID
The federal rule governing mortgage disclosures. What counts as an application, the Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure, and what resets the timing.
Document intelligence
The category AmitaSoft works in, and a term used loosely enough to be worth pinning down.
Document intelligence
Reading a document rather than storing it. What separates extraction and validation from a folder with good file names.
Where these terms overlap
Tax and lending look like separate worlds until you watch the documents. A mortgage underwriter asks for two years of tax returns. A CPA preparing those returns already holds them. The borrower sends the same W-2 to both, six weeks apart, and neither side knows the other asked.
That overlap is why these terms sit on one page instead of two. The document does not change when it crosses from one workflow to another. Only the reason for asking does.
How to use these pages
Most people arrive here from a search, read one definition, and leave. That is fine. Each page is written to answer its own question without needing the others.
If you are new to either industry, the tax terms and the lending terms are worth reading as two short sequences rather than in isolation. On the tax side, an engagement letter comes first, then an organizer, then a document request list. On the lending side, a loan application leads to underwriting, which leads to clear to close. Reading them in that order gives you the shape of the process rather than a pile of definitions.
Nothing here is advice about your own return or your own loan. These pages describe how the work is normally done. What applies to your situation is a question for the firm handling it.
Answers at a glance
Common questions
An engagement letter is the agreement that defines what your accountant will do, what it costs, and what falls outside the work. A tax organizer collects the information needed to prepare the return. The letter comes first and gets signed. The organizer comes next and gets filled in.
Often yes. Tax returns, W-2s, 1099s and bank statements show up in both workflows. A lender wants them as evidence of income. A preparer wants them to build the return. The same file serves two purposes and usually gets collected twice.
Anyone who runs into these terms without a background in tax or lending. Clients receiving paperwork from a firm, borrowers reading emails from a loan officer, and people new to either industry.
No. These pages define terms and describe how firms typically work. They do not tell you what to file, what to claim, or what to sign. For anything that affects your own return or loan, ask the firm handling it.
Those pages are still being written. A term appears in the list once we know it belongs there, and becomes a link once there is a full explanation behind it. We would rather show what is coming than publish a thin page to fill a gap.
Yes. Form 1003, TRID and Desktop Underwriter are all part of the US mortgage system, and the tax terms describe how US firms work with clients. The underlying ideas travel, but the names and the rules do not.
See how this works in practice
These terms describe the work. AmitaSoft's platforms are what move it forward.