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It didn't take long talking to attendees at the recent CCH User Conference to get the impression that a lot of tax professionals think Web-based tax preparation is interesting, but they aren't sure partners will go for the idea. And just maybe, they aren't sure that tax is one area that Internet-based software makes a big difference. After all, if firms can make documents available to preparers at home and collaborate via the Web, we're part of the way there. Do you really need to calculate over the wires?

 But those three major players, CCH, Thomson Reuters and Intuit, have all made announcements this year about their plans for the Web, truly Internet products where the code is written for this purpose and there's no code or little code on the user's desktop.

So what's going to drive the change? I think ultimately, now that the technology is decently advanced, it's going to be less user preference than the economics driving the vendors. It's going to be easier and cheaper for them to provide and maintain the software via the Internet than to have licensed versions on all computers on premise.

We've seen these changes before. Firms once got their desktop software via a floppy disk and then via CD, which is the way a lot of software is still distributed. Economically, it's just not worth it for the software publishers to be in the software duplication and distribution business. And code is a lot easier to control when all customers are on the same version.

At a certain point, vendors started charging for those who still wanted to have floppy disks. And I think that ultimately, when the companies think SaaS is accepted enough, the publishers will opt for the Internet simply because it custs their costs.

And those who haven't yet hopped on the bandwagon will have to get on.

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