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I think much of Intuit’s “regulatory capture” is on TurboTax, and it’s offering for small businesses (Quickbooks) is actually a very competitive marketplace wit

I think much of Intuit’s “regulatory capture” is on TurboTax, and it’s offering for small businesses (Quickbooks) is actually a very competitive marketplace with other actors such as Square, PayPal, Wix, and Stripe actively expanding into each other’s markets. In the next decade there will be market capture for one or two companies of the entire sub 50 employee retail business market segment. Everything from food trucks to floral shops will have one monthly subscription that covers pos system, employee scheduling/payroll, invoicing, tax, and much more in a platform of tools that resembles AWS or Azure. This is clearly Quickbooks expanding into fulfilling marketing needs for their clients. Keep in mind it’s competitive in two ways. If businesses running Square have a competitive advantage because of tooling compared to businesses running Quickbooks than Quickbooks will suffer more churn and lose in the long run to Square.

tentacleuno 5y ago
Ahh, that's where I've heard of them: QuickBooks.
- buitreVirtual 5y ago
  And Mint
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Afaik, they bought Mint.
    - after_care 5y ago
      In 2009
fragmede 5y ago
http://Pilot.com http://Pilot.com (no affiliation but I've worked with some of the people there) is directly trying to compete with QuickBooks on QuickBooks playing field. Problem is, QuickBooks is the standard in the industry, like Adove Photoshop or Microsoft Windows in the 1990's. Square has the advantage that they already have the data, but then they don't have the same incentives to compete on bookkeeper tools.
btown 5y ago
It's important, though, to understand exactly what that "regulatory capture" entails. See https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f... : > Internal presentations lay out company tactics for fighting “encroachment,” Intuit’s catchall term for any government initiative to make filing taxes easier — such as creating a free government filing system or pre-filling people’s returns with payroll or other data the IRS already has. “For a decade proposals have sought to create IRS tax software or a ReturnFree Tax System; All were stopped,” reads a confidential 2007 PowerPoint presentation from an Intuit board of directors meeting. The company’s 2014-15 plan included manufacturing “3rd-party grass roots” support. “Buy ads for op-eds/editorials/stories in African American and Latino media,” one internal PowerPoint slide states [ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-TurboTax-2014-15-Encroachment-Strategy.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-Turbo... ]... Based on publicly available data and statements by Intuit executives, ProPublica estimates that roughly 15 million paying TurboTax customers could have filed for free if they found Free File. That represents more than $1.5 billion in estimated revenue, or more than half the total that TurboTax generates. Those affected include retirees, students, people on disability and minimum-wage workers. Note as well that Intuit recently acquired Credit Karma for $8.1 billion - a company whose business model relies on granularly predicting what financial products will be most profitable when offered to consumers. At the end of the day, it's often impossible to avoid using Intuit's B2B solutions like QuickBooks - as others have noted, they're an industry standard. But in the packed market of email service providers, is this the company who will set the most robust ethical boundaries on how to use a treasure trove of highly-actionable PII and purchasing data? Do we want to contribute to feeding our customers' data to such a company? That's a choice that those of us choosing ESP solutions should make with eyes wide open.

tentacleuno 5y ago

Ahh, that's where I've heard of them: QuickBooks.

buitreVirtual 5y ago
And Mint
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Afaik, they bought Mint.
  - after_care 5y ago
    In 2009

fragmede 5y ago

http://Pilot.com http://Pilot.com (no affiliation but I've worked with some of the people there) is directly trying to compete with QuickBooks on QuickBooks playing field. Problem is, QuickBooks is the standard in the industry, like Adove Photoshop or Microsoft Windows in the 1990's. Square has the advantage that they already have the data, but then they don't have the same incentives to compete on bookkeeper tools.

btown 5y ago

It's important, though, to understand exactly what that "regulatory capture" entails. See https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f... : > Internal presentations lay out company tactics for fighting “encroachment,” Intuit’s catchall term for any government initiative to make filing taxes easier — such as creating a free government filing system or pre-filling people’s returns with payroll or other data the IRS already has. “For a decade proposals have sought to create IRS tax software or a ReturnFree Tax System; All were stopped,” reads a confidential 2007 PowerPoint presentation from an Intuit board of directors meeting. The company’s 2014-15 plan included manufacturing “3rd-party grass roots” support. “Buy ads for op-eds/editorials/stories in African American and Latino media,” one internal PowerPoint slide states [ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-TurboTax-2014-15-Encroachment-Strategy.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-Turbo... ]... Based on publicly available data and statements by Intuit executives, ProPublica estimates that roughly 15 million paying TurboTax customers could have filed for free if they found Free File. That represents more than $1.5 billion in estimated revenue, or more than half the total that TurboTax generates. Those affected include retirees, students, people on disability and minimum-wage workers. Note as well that Intuit recently acquired Credit Karma for $8.1 billion - a company whose business model relies on granularly predicting what financial products will be most profitable when offered to consumers. At the end of the day, it's often impossible to avoid using Intuit's B2B solutions like QuickBooks - as others have noted, they're an industry standard. But in the packed market of email service providers, is this the company who will set the most robust ethical boundaries on how to use a treasure trove of highly-actionable PII and purchasing data? Do we want to contribute to feeding our customers' data to such a company? That's a choice that those of us choosing ESP solutions should make with eyes wide open.