TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown
1–10 of 93 posts
Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown
#2I had an awful experience with TurboTax just a few days ago, and will probably never use it again. In the very beginning, it asked me to click on some some things to get a "life picture" and seemed the Free version was fine. Then I get halfway into it, and it says it can't continue unless I use Premium. When I was almost done it asked to charge extra for "audit protection" and I had a wave of anxiety sweep over me, and almost purchased that too.
It has been brought up a few times here: companies like H&R Block have lobbied to keep things complicated.
https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...
Unless I have some special deductions to take care of, the government should just send me something like "we have received forms x,y,z from a,b,c. This is your AGI, what we/you owe. does this look correct?"
Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown
#3I stopped using TurboTax some years ago and switched to TaxAct as a less bad alternative. I didn’t believe them to be necessarily tons better than giving money to TurboTax, but I figured at least it wouldn’t just keep solidifying a market leader who was capturing a significant market based mostly around actively lobbying to keep it that way.
In the last two years I took a leap to CreditKarma’s tax offering. It is a bit basic and not quite as endlessly full featured, but it is simple, efficient, pretty quick and quite fast. It’s also entirely free. The first year I used it I ran my numbers in a competing product to check, I was self employed at the time, which meant my tax situation wasn’t exactly easy that year.
Anyway, the numbers lined up perfectly. So I used CreditKarma to file and have been happy with it ever since. Honestly at this point I’d pay for it, just to give them a more solid business model and development budget, but as far as I know they don’t even have a paid option!
I filed in February this year. It was easy.
I actively avoid Intuit products now.
(Though, pragmatism wins here to some degree: I did use their self-employment accounting tool for a few years even when I had switched away from their tax software. That tool makes it annoyingly easy to keep accurate books and Xero just wasn’t as good and simple at what I was looking for. If I was doing it again today, I’d definitely again look for alternatives. And frankly I think I’d find them now.)
Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown
#4I had an awful experience with TurboTax just a few days ago, and will probably never use it again. In the very beginning, it asked me to click on some some things to get a "life picture" and seemed the Free version was fine. Then I get halfway into it, and it says it can't continue unless I use Premium. When I was almost done it asked to charge extra for "audit protection" and I had a wave of anxiety sweep over me, a…
The ridiculous tax code isnt the fault of TT, even though they lobby to keep it that way. It's the fault of the cowards we keep sending to DC. Take it up with them.
Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown
#5This might not apply to many who frequent HN, but not enough people know about Free File options.
If your adjusted gross income is less than $66,000 you can likely file your federal and potentially state taxes for free.
If you make more than $66,00 AGI, the IRS provides fillable forms that are pretty easy to use for your federal but might not be applicable in all circumstances.
https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...
Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown
#6This might not apply to many who frequent HN, but not enough people know about Free File options. If your adjusted gross income is less than $66,000 you can likely file your federal and potentially state taxes for free. If you make more than $66,00 AGI, the IRS provides fillable forms that are pretty easy to use for your federal but might not be applicable in all circumstances. https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do…
I was just about to comment about this! I moved outside of the states, and have a non-US bank account, which is something that TurboTax doesn't handle in their free version. I ended up using H&R Block through this Free File, and it covered both federal (1040) and CA returns for free, which TurboTax wanted to charge $30 for CA return and like $40 or $50 for the federal since I have a non-US bank account. If you make less than $66k, definitely check out that link because it can save you a good chunk of money depending in your tax situation.
Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown
#7It's not that hard to do your taxes on your own, especially if you have last year's as a model to check yourself. For computationally-oriented folks, I imagine you probably want to have a mental model of how you're presenting yourself tax-wise (instead of just blindly trusting Turbo Tax). In that case, most of what you're getting with Turbo Tax is UI.
Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown
#8I had an awful experience with TurboTax just a few days ago, and will probably never use it again. In the very beginning, it asked me to click on some some things to get a "life picture" and seemed the Free version was fine. Then I get halfway into it, and it says it can't continue unless I use Premium. When I was almost done it asked to charge extra for "audit protection" and I had a wave of anxiety sweep over me, a…
The ridiculous tax code isnt the fault of TT, even though they lobby to keep it that way. It's the fault of the cowards we keep sending to DC. Take it up with them.
Post-citizens United, it’s the corporations.
Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown
#9I had an awful experience with TurboTax just a few days ago, and will probably never use it again. In the very beginning, it asked me to click on some some things to get a "life picture" and seemed the Free version was fine. Then I get halfway into it, and it says it can't continue unless I use Premium. When I was almost done it asked to charge extra for "audit protection" and I had a wave of anxiety sweep over me, a…
The ridiculous tax code isnt the fault of TT, even though they lobby to keep it that way. It's the fault of the cowards we keep sending to DC. Take it up with them.
And yet whenever we try to eliminate “loopholes”, there’s some group complaining vigorously to keep that complexity. The new tax law simplified taxes for most filers by increasing the standard deduction (by eliminating exemptions).