What makes this decision so curious is that home tax software is the quintessential “sticky” product. Evidently, however, its vision was obscured by the dollar signs dancing in its head, 30 bucks at a time. Of course, Intuit could have added the schedules to the online and mobile versions, instead of removing them from the desktop version-then it would have won plaudits and customer loyalty by adding value. When I asked Miller why resolving “customer confusion” required removing functions from Deluxe in a way that caused confusion, she replied that the goal was to ensure that the desktop version of Deluxe was the same as the online or mobile version.
This change enables us to innovate faster and make improvements that benefit all customers at the same time, regardless of whether they use our online or desktop software.” So this year, we made the product experience consistent across all TurboTax offerings. These differences also impeded our ability to introduce new innovations across the entire TurboTax product line. Intuit spokeswoman Julie Miller told me in an email: “As new online and mobile technologies emerged, our products, and the tax scope and features they included, began to differ, leading to customer confusion. TurboTax then informs them they have to upgrade to the “Premier” edition, which costs another $25-$30, or even to the “Home & Business” version, which is priced $10 above Premier. Many users discover the problem only when they get to the point in doing their taxes where they have to start plugging information into those schedules. Hints of this change are present on the Deluxe program’s packaging, but in a very obscure way. Disclosure: I’ve been a long-term user of TurboTax and I do file some of these schedules, but I haven’t done my taxes yet this year. The others cover profit or loss and business expenses from a sole proprietor business, such as a home business (C) income from rental property, royalties or partnerships (E) and farm income (F). Schedule D is used by anyone reporting capital gains or losses from stock or bond sales. Users of the TurboTax deluxe edition, which sells for a list price of $59.99 but can be found almost everywhere for $49.99, have discovered that for the first time, the program won’t allow them to file tax schedules C, D, E or F automatically with their tax returns.
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