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What's telling is that TurboTax's UX is really, really, good, deceptive pricing aside. Like, so good I almost enjoy using it to do my taxes. The very fact that

What's telling is that TurboTax's UX is really, really, good, deceptive pricing aside. Like, so good I almost enjoy using it to do my taxes. The very fact that Intuit has clearly invested money into making a beautiful interface for a tax program, a program that people use once a year, just goes to show how profitable the current arrangement is for them, and how determined they are to keep the average taxpayer from switching to any competing tax filing ecosystem.

minikites 5y ago
>TurboTax's UX is really, really, good It's really not. It's hard to keep track of where you are in your return and easy to get lost. You can't paste into any credential field for fetching information from your bank or other outside data source.
readflaggedcomm 5y ago
I disagree that their interface is good, even in the simplest tier. I get absurd cosmetic delays and animations, text that's tweaked to be so pale and thin that it disappears in some browsers, and tedious wizard-style workflow that you have to traverse half a dozen times when the vague language doesn't match the data on your forms. And don't get me started on confusing between "activities" (that's the official term, not Intuit's fault) because there's no way to see where you are in the process or show an overview until the end, and the final result is in a different format that I can't reconcile with what I filled in.
throwawayboise 5y ago
Their other big (maybe bigger?) cash cow for Intuit is Quickbooks. It's the system most small businesses use, because their accountants are integrated with it and push all their clients to use it.
- ilamont 5y ago
  Yep. Accountants don't want to try anything else. And it's shocking how bad some of the QBO integrations are, especially for newish technologies. Intuit even screwed up PayPal in a way that some accountants don't want to use it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5zKWBXtQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5zKWBXtQU), forcing a labor intensive manual process.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    It seems that if most accountants want to use Quickbooks, this would open a market opportunity for accountants willing to integrate with other accounting software.
throwaway413 5y ago
Do you think if it was a government program that it would have the same level of UX polish and ease of use?
SamBam 5y ago
Strongly disagree. It is well designed to hold you by the hand if you just go down the happy-path of what a user who has all their documents in hand when the right question pops up on the screen. It's poorly designed for people who want to go back, people who just want to input their forms, and people who value their time. There is no reason each question needs to take up its own screen, instead of being a list. There is no reason it needs to pretend to calculate for 15 seconds after every few questions.
usaar333 5y ago
Have to disagree. It's overly optimized for getting every tax deduction over speed and the result is most users wasting tons of time. Example: I know every year there is no way my itemized deductions will exceed the standard deduction. But there is no clear way to tell TurboTax to stop wasting my time on itemized deductions.

minikites 5y ago

>TurboTax's UX is really, really, good It's really not. It's hard to keep track of where you are in your return and easy to get lost. You can't paste into any credential field for fetching information from your bank or other outside data source.

readflaggedcomm 5y ago

I disagree that their interface is good, even in the simplest tier. I get absurd cosmetic delays and animations, text that's tweaked to be so pale and thin that it disappears in some browsers, and tedious wizard-style workflow that you have to traverse half a dozen times when the vague language doesn't match the data on your forms. And don't get me started on confusing between "activities" (that's the official term, not Intuit's fault) because there's no way to see where you are in the process or show an overview until the end, and the final result is in a different format that I can't reconcile with what I filled in.

throwawayboise 5y ago

Their other big (maybe bigger?) cash cow for Intuit is Quickbooks. It's the system most small businesses use, because their accountants are integrated with it and push all their clients to use it.

ilamont 5y ago
Yep. Accountants don't want to try anything else. And it's shocking how bad some of the QBO integrations are, especially for newish technologies. Intuit even screwed up PayPal in a way that some accountants don't want to use it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5zKWBXtQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5zKWBXtQU), forcing a labor intensive manual process.
- simondotau 5y ago
  It seems that if most accountants want to use Quickbooks, this would open a market opportunity for accountants willing to integrate with other accounting software.

throwaway413 5y ago

Do you think if it was a government program that it would have the same level of UX polish and ease of use?

SamBam 5y ago

Strongly disagree. It is well designed to hold you by the hand if you just go down the happy-path of what a user who has all their documents in hand when the right question pops up on the screen. It's poorly designed for people who want to go back, people who just want to input their forms, and people who value their time. There is no reason each question needs to take up its own screen, instead of being a list. There is no reason it needs to pretend to calculate for 15 seconds after every few questions.

usaar333 5y ago

Have to disagree. It's overly optimized for getting every tax deduction over speed and the result is most users wasting tons of time. Example: I know every year there is no way my itemized deductions will exceed the standard deduction. But there is no clear way to tell TurboTax to stop wasting my time on itemized deductions.