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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

#71

Post by [deleted] »

nsxwolf wrote: post #14
cproctor wrote: post #7

It'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.

There’s a lot of deductions I qualify for that I didn’t know about until I hired a real accountant. I also didn’t know about depreciation recapture on the sale of a rental property. I didn’t know about depreciation at all. If I hadn’t hired an accountant I never would have known to take the depreciation, and wouldn’t have learned that your depreciation gets recaptured even if you don’t claim it. If your tax situation…

[deleted]

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#74

Post by edraferi »

arikrak wrote: post #73

I bought the turbo tax CD which claimed to come with phone support from CPAs. The CD worked fine for the most part but the phone support was basically a scam.

I used their online video support this year. I thought it was pretty good. You get an appointment, the. They all you (on time!) and open a little video window in your browser. Overall I felt more confident in my return knowing a CPA looked at it, mostly because I could describe my individual situation and confirm I was reporting it correctly.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#75

Post by splitrocket »

eh78ssxv2f wrote: post #61
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.

The overwhelming majority of folks don't donate enough to charity to hit the tax write-off level.

Countries with sane tax collection systems make it easy for you to add those deductions, either on paper or with a web service run by the government, for free.

And your mortgages, unless they are from international banks, yes, the IRS already knows about those too. Let me put it this way: if it goes through a US domiciled bank, the IRS knows about it already.

Yes, people with complex tax returns do use accountants to file their taxes in countries with sane systems too, but the overwhelming majority don't need the complexity for the equivalent of a w2 and/or a couple of 1099s.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#76

Post by Retric »

astura wrote: post #70
Retric wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can deduct state taxes which adds up. Really 24,000$ is easier to hit than you might think.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#77

Post by jancsika »

ReverseCold wrote: post #65
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.

Opentaxsolver starts with the following imperative sentence: "Select tax program." That means I must know a priori which tax form corresponds to my particular tax situation.

Choosing the correct tax forms is the job of the software, not the layperson. If it cannot or will not perform that job then it isn't a wizard (or at least not on the same level of time-saving as Turbotax).

If it's not a wizard then it isn't the FLOSS analog of Turbotax.

Edit: clarification

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#78

Post by evanpw »

Retric wrote: post #76
astura wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can deduct state taxes which adds up. Really 24,000$ is easier to hit than you might think.

You can only deduct 10k of state taxes starting next year

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#79

Post by Hello71 »

shkkmo wrote: post #34
Hello71 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

too bad they sell your tax information, in all likelihood to companies like Equifax. now they don't have to ask your employers your salary anymore, you can just tell them.

Do you have evidence or justification for this claim?

From their privacy policy https://www.creditkarma.com/tax/privacy:

When We Share the Information We Collect

Affiliates: We may share certain information with our affiliated companies, such as Credit Karma, to help us provide our Services and manage your account.

now, it seems fine for Credit Karma Tax to share information with Credit Karma. what exactly counts as an "affiliate" though? I mean, "affiliate marketing" is a common term, and that's pretty darn broad. I read it in the broadest terms possible, which would be "everyone we have a business relationship with", necessarily including TransUnion and probably other CRAs.

Re: TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown

#80

Post by atomi »

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…

TurboTax is the worst and they'll squeeze you any way they can.
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