The company said that those results show it is maintaining market share. And while the consumer market is being filled with publicity about free products, Intuit emphasizes that its longer-range plans is to attract customers willing to spend more money on the tax software product.

"We are looking to add more value to our product lineup to attract higher-value customers," CEO Brad Smith said during this week's webcast for Intuit's results for the second quarter ended January 31.

Overall, the number of efiled returns through February 17 was down 13.5 percent, according to a report by the Internal Revenue Services. Self-prepared efiles were off 11 percent and those by paid professionals declined by 16.1 percent. Smith said the difference between the February 17 year-to-date figures and the Intuit year-to-date figures for February show no meaningful difference.

The number of TurboTax units was 19,375,000, down 5 percent from a year ago. The number of online TurboTax units was off by 6 percent, desktop by three percent.

Smith noted that the difference between the efiles counted by the IRS and the units reported by Intuit is that each desktop unit produces an average of two efiled returns while the online ratio is one-to-one.