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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

#61

Post by eh78ssxv2f »

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...

There are lot of things that government does not know e.g., how much I donated to Goodwill or other charities, or if I have multiple homes with mortgages , then which one is my primary residence.

We can argue that the tax code should be simpler but that's a different argument.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#62

Post by rdl »

geomark wrote: post #52
rdl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's interesting. I left the US many years ago but still have to file an income tax return as well as FBAR. But I don't live in PR.

Yeah, I spent all but 2 years 1998-2011 doing same. FATCA just keeps making it worse.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#63

Post by Spivak »

ams6110 wrote: post #46
goatherders wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But why? I mean we're in a forum if tech nerds and people are seriously advocating filling out a form and doing calculations manually?

You're missing the feature where your information is carried over year to year and all the forms you get can be automatically parsed. "Doing your taxes" with current software can be as simple as uploading a few PDFs and clicking next a bunch of times.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#64

Post by Spivak »

maym86 wrote: post #19
votepaunchy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations don’t file a 1040.

Corporations like Intuit TurboTax spend millions of dollars of the money you give them to loby the government and keep the system so convoluted that you need them to do your taxes.

This is more a meme than a reality. I'm sure that they do spend money to protect their business but it's a bit silly to think that they have a measurable effect on the tax code complexity compared to the money that comes from other special interests. People with simple tax situations could very easily full out the forms from the IRS. The 1040ez lives up to it's name -- doing it with software is in most cases just more convenient. And people with complicated tax situations have a tax accountant.

There's a middle ground with upper middle incomes and small businesses which have somewhat reasonably nontrivial tax code that applies. In the absence of software they would probably be pushed the accountant route. Generally people want this complexity because they pay less compared to proposed simpler systems.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#65

Post by ReverseCold »

jancsika wrote: post #51

I'm almost afraid to ask: What's the FLOSS analog to Turbotax? Just to be clear-- I'm talking about a wizard that asks laypeople a clear set of curated questions and ends up with a set of tax forms that are very likely filled in with the correct answers.

http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net

It seems to be relatively well updated but I wouldn't be surprised if it made errors.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#66

Post by bajsejohannes »

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...

Interesting (and not entirely surprising). Reposted that article for more visibility: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16841449

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#67

Post by maym86 »

Spivak wrote: post #64
maym86 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations like Intuit TurboTax spend millions of dollars of the money you give them to loby the government and keep the system so convoluted that you need them to do your taxes.

This is more a meme than a reality. I'm sure that they do spend money to protect their business but it's a bit silly to think that they have a measurable effect on the tax code complexity compared to the money that comes from other special interests. People with simple tax situations could very easily full out the forms from the IRS. The 1040ez lives up to it's name -- doing it with software is in most cases just mor…

It's not about the tax code complexity. It's about the government having a system in place to use the information it already has to automatically complete your taxes if you have a simpler tax return. This happens in a lot of other countries and, having lived in one where this happens, is much better.

Intuit lobbys to stop this happening because they know a lot of people don't have complex returns and if the government automatically calculates basic returns it would wipe out a large portion of their customer base.

https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#68

Post by Angostura »

goatherders wrote: post #4
clumsysmurf wrote: post #2

I 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.

> even though they lobby to keep it that way.

It’s continuing existence is their fault, then. If not their sole fault.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#69

Post by astura »

I am baffled why anyone would ever use TurboTax. It's full of these dark UI patterns and tricks and comparable products exist for a very small fraction of the price. Out of curiosity I looked up what TurboTax would have costed me and they wanted $100 (I have business income) whereas I used TaxHawk for $14.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#70

Post by astura »

Retric wrote: post #29
maxerickson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty much guaranteed that fewer people will itemize this year.

You generally need to do the itemized calculations to see which one saves you more money. Thus, the result is kind of meaningless as you do the same work either way. The only way to simplify taxes is to actually remove deductions.

I (and probably the vast majority of people) don't have to do any calculations to know I'll have less than $24,000 in deductions because $24,000 is ridiculously high amount.
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