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TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

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Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#41

Post by rdl »

enraged_camel wrote: post #39
rdl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There are lots of other ways. (Renouncing is bad for many reasons; I'm patriotic, although the US has a lot of problems, and there's essentially a 10y tax on unrealized gains at exit, plus lifetime visa problems.) 1) Make 2) Move to a place which under Section 933 of the IRC can make its own tax laws for bona fide residents. I'm doing Act 22 (and Act 20 for business, and some other things) and taking advantage of…

>>There are some similar opportunities for US citizens in the other US territories, but PR is the best one I think, and is certainly the biggest and most developed. Maybe it was, but Hurricane Maria fucked it hard and it is unlikely to recover anytime soon. Just the other day a tree fell on a repaired power line and 640,000 people in San Juan (the capital!) lost power. That’s just crazy to me.

Maria was honestly insignificant compared to the 2006-2017 economic problems. Maybe 10%? (It was a big short term problem, especially due to the deferred maintenance and lack of resources/capabilities, but wouldn't have been a lingering crisis without the economic problems.)

Savings from 0% tax pays for a pretty amazing generator/solar/lithium ion battery system. The electrical grid is being privatized and turned into a bunch of microgrids (already happening; upscale condo buildings have generators, and the homes of rich people have generators/solar.) The biggest problem is traffic lights, which don't work even in the areas with power, but outside of SJ and first-ring suburbs traffic volumes are fairly light.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#42

Post by bob_theslob646 »

splitrocket wrote: post #12

America, one of the few developed nations where doing your taxes involves paying a third party to help you tell the government what it already knows. TurboTax and HR block lobby considerably to prevent the government from making the process of paying taxes free, fast, and painless for the overwhelming majority of taxpayers. https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...

Link is dead.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#43

Post by cbhl »

If one has a simple tax situation, I'd recommend looking at Credit Karma (US) or SimpleTax (Canada).

Unfortunately, I've found TurboTax is better with weird corner cases. It helped me figure out I was eligible for the American Opportunity Tax Credit (US citizen going to university in Canada) which alone was a few thousand dollars that I would have missed if I had filed a 1040-EZ on paper. It has handled 401k->roth rollovers and cost basis, reporting capital gains (when I divested from Bitcoin), paying taxes on Canadian RRSP capital gains, and sales of Restricted Stock Units. I'll probably pay to use it for the foreseeable future.

In Canada, the tax system is less arcane, so the tax software companies have to give it to university students for free to get them hooked. It's too bad that even if I move to another country, I'll have to file US tax returns for life.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#44

Post by ams6110 »

djcapelis wrote: post #3

I 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 b…

I just download the forms from the IRS and fill them out. File on paper. It's not very hard and that way nobody but the IRS has my data.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#45

Post by ams6110 »

cbhl wrote: post #43

If one has a simple tax situation, I'd recommend looking at Credit Karma (US) or SimpleTax (Canada). Unfortunately, I've found TurboTax is better with weird corner cases. It helped me figure out I was eligible for the American Opportunity Tax Credit (US citizen going to university in Canada) which alone was a few thousand dollars that I would have missed if I had filed a 1040-EZ on paper. It has handled 401k->roth ro…

I would always advise filing the full 1040 even if the EZ would work for you. If your tax situation is simple you leave most of the lines blank, but it will prompt you to check out a lot of stuff that you would never see if you filed an EZ, including the American Opportunity tax credit.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#46

Post by ams6110 »

goatherders wrote: post #25
maxerickson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess my statement as made is ambiguous, but I wouldn't have said "this year" if I meant 2017 taxes.

Ok. Granted fewer people will itemize in 2018. And so what? I don't think TT has a stranglehold on the industry because people worry about their itemizations. In other words, I don't expect TT to have fewer users and less revenue for 2018 returns. No one is going to say "the standard deduction makes sense for me...I no longer need turbo tax"

Well they should. If you don't even need to itemize you should just fill out the forms from the IRS. If you can do some simple addition and subtraction it's not difficult. Probably just as fast if not faster than being interviewed by your tax program.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#47

Post by breademoji »

cortesoft wrote: post #26

I do hate that they lobby for keeping taxes hard to file, but I have no issue paying them $60 to do my taxes. The website is such a great user experience, and they earned that money in my estimation. Why should it be free? They clearly put a lot of work into their site. My only other issue with them is that they keep emailing me telling me to get started with my filing, but I already completed my tax return weeks ago…

TurboTax UX is solid! I spent a couple of years recommending the product to everyone I knew because I was so delighted by the experience. The $60 was a no-brainer.

But instead of doubling-down on this delightful product experience, they're investing in disingenuous conversion hacks like the "PLUS Help & Tools" upgrade funnel. Designed to feel like it is part of the actual filing process, users are converted more effectively when they're led to believe this is just another step toward completing their task, similar to how users respond to native ads.

In the UX teardown, I take a more critical look at the design decisions behind the freemium funnel. I wish they were more transparent about their pricing structure up front so users could compare the benefits of products and add-ons against their needs and budget.

--

That's frustrating about the emails you're receiving even after filing. Let's hope they build out smarter email campaigns next year that are more aware of user actions across all TurboTax systems.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#48

Post by breademoji »

enraged_camel wrote: post #38
cortesoft wrote: post #26

I do hate that they lobby for keeping taxes hard to file, but I have no issue paying them $60 to do my taxes. The website is such a great user experience, and they earned that money in my estimation. Why should it be free? They clearly put a lot of work into their site. My only other issue with them is that they keep emailing me telling me to get started with my filing, but I already completed my tax return weeks ago…

It’s not that TurboTax should be free. Obviously no one is arguing that. The argument is that the tax code shouldn’t be so complicated that you need to pay a fee to file your taxes smoothly and with little risk of getting it wrong (and getting audited/fined).

And yes, that's the deeper argument :)

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#49

Post by geomark »

rdl wrote: post #35
geomark wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you renounce US citizenship? I think that's the only way to remove the requirement to file a US tax return.

No. There are lots of other ways. (Renouncing is bad for many reasons; I'm patriotic, although the US has a lot of problems, and there's essentially a 10y tax on unrealized gains at exit, plus lifetime visa problems.) 1) Make 2) Move to a place which under Section 933 of the IRC can make its own tax laws for bona fide residents. I'm doing Act 22 (and Act 20 for business, and some other things) and taking advantage of…

That's interesting. But you still have to file a US tax return, right?

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#50

Post by rdl »

geomark wrote: post #49
rdl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There are lots of other ways. (Renouncing is bad for many reasons; I'm patriotic, although the US has a lot of problems, and there's essentially a 10y tax on unrealized gains at exit, plus lifetime visa problems.) 1) Make 2) Move to a place which under Section 933 of the IRC can make its own tax laws for bona fide residents. I'm doing Act 22 (and Act 20 for business, and some other things) and taking advantage of…

That's interesting. But you still have to file a US tax return, right?

Only year-of-move (and year-of-return, but I an uncertain if the US will exist in 2036.) If you have no US liability, because all of your income is PR-source, no need to file US returns in the intervening years. It's possible I'll have some US source income, though, but obviously the goal is to minimize that in favor of PR source income. There are a bunch of complex sourcing rules.

This is different than the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE), where you get a $100500 (indexed) deduction, but have to file to claim it.

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