Among publicly held companies in the tax business, everyone had a so-so-tax season, except for Intuit. The last companies to report results for the 2015 tax season were That follows the report by H&R Block that its returns, which said that its returns were of by .9 percent from the prior year, as the number of returns prepared and filed from its stores were off by 4.6 percent. However, its return revenue rose and the company also pointed to its decision not to offer free 1040EZ returns this year as a factor in the decline.
By contrast, Intuit reported the number of TurboTax units sold rose by 9 percent.
Liberty Tax CEO John Hewitt termed the tax season disappointing, and commented. "The complication and confusion around the Affordable Care Act (ACA) did not drive the shift to paid preparers or the level of price increase that we were expecting this year, and in fact might have actually reduced overall return counts for the industry." Hewitt expects healthcare reform will have a bigger impact next year.
In fact, Liberty's overall number of returns prepared fell by .8 percent to just under 2 million. Those results stemmed from a drop in the number of returns filed by taxpayers who used Liberty's online filing services. That total fell by 16.2 percent to 145,000.
The result was similar with TaxAct.Its online efiling was down slightly with those numbers countered by an increase in desktop returns, which goes against recent trends. The total for the 2015 season was just under 5.5 million returns, down from 5.52 million the prior year, including an 18-percent decline for returns filed via the Free File Alliance. The number of desktop returns rose to 261,000 from 246,000. The number of online returns fell to 5.05 million from 5.08 million.