TurboTax 2014 Feature Change + Free H&R Block Offer + Free TurboTax Upgrade

Intuit had carefully listened to its customers over the years, identifying common taxpayer pain points and devising elegant design solutions to solve its customers’ problems. By combining TurboTax’s ease of use as a product with the financial benefits of free e-filing, Intuit was reducing as much friction as it possibly could to get people to try TurboTax and file a return. Once a user had seen how easily they could file their returns electronically for free, they would be significantly more likely to use TurboTax for their returns next year. Intuit’s problem-focused development process had made actually filing tax returns electronically much easier.

• As part of the scheme, the defendants contacted Intuit, claimed that software discs they purchased were lost, stolen or damaged, and requested free replacement discs.
• The overall price of H&R Block Premium is within a few dollars of its online offering.
• The product necessarily came on a disk, and by the end of the 1990s TurboTax boxes were nearly ubiquitous, on shelves in office supply stores across America.
• New prompts and messages were added to give users a better idea of where they were in the e-filing process.
• This is a must-have tool for all since at any one point you must have to pay taxes from your income.

TurboTax Premier searches for more than 450 tax deductions and credits to find qualifying tax breaks. When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you’ll be logged-in to this account.

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The 2007 launch of Free Edition started a period of rapid growth for TurboTax. Within two years, use of its web products had almost doubled, and over the past decade, its website has grown each year by an average of 2 million more customers. The company reported this year that TurboTax online had handled 32 million returns. In a statement, it said around a third of that number used Free Edition.

I may try one of the other options this year just to test more waters, but its good to know the issues and options around stocks as I have begun to be more involved there. I wish there was this amount of uproar over companies like Intuit actively lobbing and spending millions (billions?) to prevent our taxes from being automated like in civilized nations to keep themselves in business. Their business and practices are directly against the best interest ttps://turbo-tax.org/ of the people but no one says anything. Both the online and desktop versions of their Free Federal edition and cover all the Schedules A/B/C/D/E and even includes a free Federal E-File. For them, the Deluxe option means addition of time-saving import features. Their Ultimate package with everything Federal and State included – all Schedules, free Fed e-File, free State e-File – runs $17.99 for Online or $30.99 for Desktop ($21.99 + $9.99 State e-File).

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TurboTax is up to date with all the latest tax laws, including the new health care law and you can easily and accurately file your taxes with confidence when you use TurboTax. File your taxes across devices – The new TurboTax Mobile App includes the full TurboTax product line up and allows turbotax 2014 availability you to move seamlessly across devices so you can start on your tablet or phone and finish online. Can you incorporate these elements into other parts of your product? Is there a connection between your product’s most popular features and the underlying problem your product aims to solve?

Similarly, few companies face threats as grave as those posed by the federal government’s taxation policies as Intuit. Although reducing friction and tempting users with advanced functionality is a defining characteristic of the freemium model, Intuit approached freemium differently than most companies. The freemium model was the dominant structure in tax prep in the early 2000s. What Intuit did differently was to make its freemium product as close to its paid products as it possibly could. This was reflected not only in the free product’s functionality, but also in its appearance.

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Given the existential threat to its business posed by tax simplification proposals, it’s hardly surprising that Intuit would invest heavily in political lobbying. It contradicted Intuit’s broader messaging, sent mixed signals to consumers, and cast doubt on the sincerity of Intuit’s mission. In 2004, a Stanford tax law professor called Joseph Bankman introduced an experimental pilot scheme in California known as ReadyReturn. The idea was that, since the state already had so much information about taxpayers across California, the state treasury would use this data to create pre-populated returns for the 11,000 taxpayers who participated in the pilot. Many countries already have similar systems in place, including Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, and the United Kingdom.

• Intuit also apologized for their poorly received initial apology sent on January 27.
• The first year of Free File was 2003, and for Intuit, things went well.
• This was reflected not only in the free product’s functionality, but also in its appearance.
• We can import your W-2 electronically from over one million participating employers and financial institutions so you can finish your taxes sooner.

New prompts and messages were added to give users a better idea of where they were in the e-filing process. With every design tweak or addition, TurboTax became better at solving problems in a way that genuinely delighted users. Adoption of TurboTax for the Web had increased steadily since launch, but 2002 was an incredible year for Intuit. More than 1M taxpayers used the free version of TurboTax for the Web to file their federal returns. The number of federal returns filed through the paid TurboTax product rose to 2.1M, an 80% increase from the 1.2M returns filed the previous fiscal year.

But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens. Ha, I was waiting for you to post an article about Turbotax and tax software! I always appreciate your opinion to sort out the facts from fiction. Last year was my first having to handle taxes on my own, and I enjoyed the overall ease of the online process using TurboTax.

You can even import last year’s tax return from TurboTax into the H&R Block tax software. H&R Block, which has always run a distant second to TurboTax, smells blood in the water and is offering a free copy of its tax prep software, federal and state, to the many furious TurboTax users. There isn’t a site for this, you have to email H&R Block at and include your name, address, and phone number, operating system and a photo, scan, or email showing proof of TurboTax Basic or Deluxe purchase. It’s unclear how much the brouhaha, and Intuit’s mishandling of it, has hurt TurboTax’s market leading position. Last year about 28 million taxpayers e-filed using TurboTax, compared to the seven million who used the Block product. This isn’t available yet, but Intuit CEO Brad Smithsaid in a YouTube videothat the company is moving quickly and will notify customers as soon as the change is live.

Many were also unhappy because claiming the rebate required customers to complete their taxes and e-file before applying. An internal Intuit analysis of customer calls this year shows widespread customer confusion about ads for “free” TurboTax. A marketing concept frequently invoked at Intuit, which goes by the acronym “FUD,” seeks to tap into Americans’ fear, uncertainty and doubt about the tax filing process. Intuit, the owner of TurboTax, spent more than $11 million on federal lobbying between 2008 and 2012. Intuit “opposes IRS government tax preparation”, particularly allowing taxpayers to file pre-filled returns for free, in a system similar to the established ReadyReturn service in California.

• Many countries already have similar systems in place, including Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, and the United Kingdom.
• In comparison, Intuit’s closest competitor had just 18% market share.
• H&R Block, which has always run a distant second to TurboTax, smells blood in the water and is offering a free copy of its tax prep software, federal and state, to the many furious TurboTax users.
• Almost all of them said they would happily use ReadyReturn again in the future.