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TurboTax Strong Despite Bad Publicity

Results of current tax season shows that despite some giant headaches hitting Intuit the last two weeks, they have not bothered the company's booming online business. The number of TurboTax units sold through February 14 were up 11 percent with the number of TurboTax Online units rising by 19 percent while sales of QuickBooks Online continued to boom.

Brad Smith, Intuit"At the highest level, our tax strategy is on track," CEO Brad Smith said in this week's webcast to report earnings for the second quarter ended January 31. He said publicity surrounding reported state efiling fraud had no meaningful impact. Intuit suspended state efiling for a day, but concluded reported incidents reflected identity theft that occurred outside the company's tax process.

The total TurboTax units sold hit 15.58 million, up from 14.1 million for the year earlier season through February 14, 2014. The total for TurboTax Online was 11.4 million, compared to 9.6 million in the comparale period of the prior tax season.

The number of desktop packages sold was 3.7 million, a decline of 7 percent from slightly less than 4 million a year earlier.

Intuit also sees no evidence that the Affordable Care Act is driving do-it-yourself customers to seek the services of paid preparers. Smith said. That had been the prediction, or as the hope of arch-competitor H&R Block. But Smith said TurboTax received some of the highest customer satisfaction scores and that the ACA features are "Meeting our customer needs."

He also noted that the processing of more complicated returns will not happen until later in the season.

Smith also said the company;s admitted mistake in removing Schedules C, D, E, and F from TurboTax Deluxe desktop and putting it in the higher-priced desktop TurboTax Premier affected only 3 percent of its customers.

 

Bob Scott
Bob Scott has provided information to the tax and accounting community since 1991, first as technology editor of Accounting Today, and from 1997 through 2009 as editor of its sister publication, Accounting Technology. He is known throughout the industry for his depth of knowledge and for his high journalistic standards.  Scott has made frequent appearances as a speaker, moderator and panelist and events serving tax and accounting professionals. He  has a strong background in computer journalism as an editor with two former trade publications, Computer+Software News and MIS Week and spent several years with weekly and daily newspapers in Morris County New Jersey prior to that.  A graduate of Indiana University with a degree in journalism, Bob is a native of Madison, Ind
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