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I'm a happy TurboTax customer for over 25 years. The standard workflow of TurboTax hasn't changed much. You go through a work flow filling out forms. I don't

I'm a happy TurboTax customer for over 25 years. The standard workflow of TurboTax hasn't changed much. You go through a work flow filling out forms. I don't use any of the OCR and little of the importing. I'm happy to type in numbers from forms myself. So normally I wouldn't have any use for AI, but they added it anyway. This year I asked it a couple of "Why" and "What If" questions, and it was actually useful. If it stays at arm's length, and if it can "read only", then I am OK with it and actually somewhat pleased with it.

kev009 5mo ago
I've been using it out of laziness because I know it will import the previous year. But it is pretty buggy and getting worse, they clearly want you to move off the desktop software. If you look at the actual generated tax forms, there's a lot of extra pomp around filling out some pretty trivial forms and worksheets. If they cut the desktop software I think I will just move to something like https://www.freetaxusa.com/ https://www.freetaxusa.com/.
- gdulli 5mo ago
  I made the switch to FreeTaxUSA from H&R Block online this year. It was very easy and I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner. You can upload your previous year's PDF from your other software to import the data.
  - eeixlk 5mo ago
    It's been good for so long I hope it doesn't get popular and go to shit. Free federal return and $15 state return if needed. If Intuit died tomorrow the world would be a better place.
    - HoldOnAMinute 5mo ago
      Not for me! I would have to hire an accountant or CPA. Then I would have to spend a lot of time and energy meeting with them and taking their phone calls. TurboTax occupies a middle ground and it saves me enormous amounts of time.
  - amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
    I've been using it for a few years now and it seems fine. I'm already stuck with one Intuit product (Quicken), I'm not using any more.
    - vitaliyf 5mo ago
      Intuit sold off Quicken a decade ago, and it's been a standalone company since then: https://www.pcworld.com/article/419931/intuit-selling-quicken-to-private-equity-firm-hig-capital.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/419931/intuit-selling-quicke...
- dheera 5mo ago
  I was forced to use their shitty desktop version inside a Windows VM because I don't have any Windows or Mac machines, and the web version doesn't support married filing federal jointly and state separately. Their desktop version seems like a webapp embedded inside browser frame; I don't understand why they can't make it available on the web.
  - goostavos 5mo ago
    Same for domestic partners. They push you into their desktop version for some reason, but the desktop version is a buggy pile of trash. I wasn't able to use it at all even on a windows machine. To their credit, they did refund the software without too much of a hassle (I expected a giant fight).
- flomo 5mo ago
  Disclaimer that years ago, I was impressed at how slick the TurboTax website was. So I'm surprised they even still have a desktop version (...presumably not just some electron wrapper). And given how it works, I'd guess most of your data isn't staying local for much of this.
  - conductr 5mo ago
    Their website is pretty garbage IMO. Every single click is a spinner image for 1 second while the layout adjusts and fetches data. I’m not certain if this is a react or vue or whatever FE JavaScript thing but it’s extremely prevalent across the web and pretty much completely defeats the purpose of having a SPA design.
    - flomo 5mo ago
      TT was/is old-style "slick", like at the time it put my bank to shame in terms of UI. It probably wasn't using a 'popular framework' and if it was, it wasn't a naive implementation. It also was/is optimized for desktop, while many financial corps now only care about mobile. So as of last April, it was still good enough for me. Was it fast? No. Just fast enough. That's why I doubt the desktop app is really any different. They must have a bunch of API endpoints, and the 'slowness' is all on the backend.
- xp84 5mo ago
  So sad! I used it for at least a decade, maybe like 2006-2018 or so. Their Mac desktop software was excellent then, and no Electron tomfoolery or other nonsense. And you could just keep every year's TT app installed in case you wanted to open an old return to amend it or something. I eventually decided to abandon them a couple years after they started forcing me to buy some ultra premium pro edition because I had a small amount of "business income." Switched to Credit Karma Taxes, which Intuit then bought, but miraculously some regulator forced them to divest that product, which landed at Cash App. So I have used that (now called Cash App Taxes) since then. It's a free product and even supports business income and state taxes (IIRC, state e-filing was always an additional add-on with TT). It was a little annoying to have to re-enter more that first year, but it's done a good job of rolling forward, and not that I've ever needed it, but they also have that "Audit Defense" thing included for free, another add-on upcharge TT offered.
kburman 5mo ago
> If it stays at arm's length, and if it can "read only", then I am OK with it and actually somewhat pleased with it. This isn't actually about AI. it's just classic human psychology. You’ve had a rock-solid workflow for 25 years, so it makes total sense to be cautious and reject features you don't need. Right now, keeping it at "arm's length" and "read-only" feels safe. But that's usually just phase one. Once that initial trust is established, those boundaries naturally start to melt away. Give it a couple of tax seasons, and you’ll probably find yourself wanting it to take on more of the heavy lifting.
- ForOldHack 5mo ago
  We have an app for that. Would you like me to write a new one? I could feed a lot of posts into ELIZA... Yes, A rock-solid workflow for 54+ years. And ELISA.BAS is still running strong. Its just classic human psychology.
tanjtanjtanj 5mo ago
Your experience is way different from mine. I had some very basic "double check" type questions about my very straightforward taxes I threw at the bot because it was handy and it didn't seem to know that it was even related to taxes or tax software and literally directed me to seek out someone who might know about taxes. I then asked it about the weather and it was able to talk freely about that, just seems like they're reselling another model with a different prompt up front or a RAG.
- xp84 5mo ago
  This is so bad, it's funny. But I'd expect no less from Intuit.
- hvb2 5mo ago
  I feel like every time when us devs use a chatbot we think it's crap. Whatever we built ourselves though is truly next level. I have found almost every single chat experience to be lousy and hurting the brand/product...
ak217 5mo ago
I had a mixed experience with it. I think it has enormous potential but it needs to be more deeply integrated with their system (while staying read only by default, as you said).
tptacek 5mo ago
Just a quick note that you are also telling a story about how TurboTax could be overstaffed.
anonymousiam 5mo ago
I WAS a happy TurboTax customer for over 33 years, until this year when I used HR Block TaxCut to file my 2025 returns. Intuit insisted that only Windows 11 would be supported, for no technical reason whatsoever. I assume they got a payoff from Microsoft for doing this. So now I see they're laying off 3000 employees and wonder if it has something to do with poor sales of TurboTax because of their lame policy.
- exmadscientist 5mo ago
  They did the same with Windows 7 going to 10. (I used to use a containment VM for their products, since they aren't particularly clean installs. I used the same one year after year and was too lazy to update it.) I seem to remember that that check was easy to patch out. (As are several other checks of interest.)
- karlgkk 5mo ago
  > for no technical reason whatsoever Bold of you to state that without anything to back up your claim. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t, but you shouldn’t state it as fact unless you have information backing it up
  - swiftcoder 5mo ago
    Name one feature of Windows 11 that could be so mandatory to a web app inside an electron shell, that it couldn't run on windows 10?
    - flomo 5mo ago
      A big feature for Microsoft is you have to pay them lots of money to still run supported Windows 10. Are you paying Intuit too? Probably not. I say again this is really a filter against "high support" customers because most of them are not technical and running derelict setups.
      - danaris 5mo ago
        That's not a technical reason.
bgro 5mo ago
If you use TurboTax, you are part of the problem.
boston_clone 5mo ago
Stop being a "happy customer". We shouldn't be paying in the first place. 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...
- HoldOnAMinute 5mo ago
  The alternative is a CPA/accountant, which would be annoying and time-consuming
  - boston_clone 5mo ago
    No, the alternative is being able to file for free. Turbotax lobbied for decades to make sure you have to pay.
maximinus_thrax 5mo ago
> I'm a happy TurboTax customer for over 25 years. I've been using TurboTax for about 20 years now and I am not happy. I hate it with a passion, it has more dark patterns than even LinkedIn and with my basic W-2 tax return with HDHP I managed to hit all their 'know issues' 4 years in a row. They of course offered me to upgrade several times during the 'work flow' to make up for it. I loathe the existence of Intuit and I still have some hope that a future administration will kill it by having the IRS implement a basic digital product for federal tax filing for the 90% of people who use the standard deduction. Intuit should not exist in its current form in any civilized country, it is a form of cancer which only exists because our politicians are a bunch of greedy fucks.
- s1artibartfast 5mo ago
  I just file late every year and there are never any upgrades.
steezeburger 5mo ago
Why pay for tax software? What's wrong with the free tax submission website?
- s1artibartfast 5mo ago
  most are limited to a simple 1040
  - ThunderSizzle 5mo ago
    Freetaxusa isn't. I've done complicated schedule K, etc forms on it
  - sampullman 5mo ago
    I used the IRS free fillable forms this year and it was much easier than I expected, including contractor, investment income, and foreign income declarations.
  - steezeburger 5mo ago
    That hasn't been my experience. freetaxusa has been pretty great honestly.
- xp84 5mo ago
  We don't have one. Are you talking about Direct File? The Trump admin killed it, though it was successfully nerfed from the start anyway by the Intuit and H&R Block lobbyists -- you couldn't even itemize deductions, or have 1099 income. If your taxes were that simple, you didn't need software, you could do your taxes with the 1040EZ form, a pocket calculator and 10 minutes. Note: If you're just taking the piss because every other country has a government method to submit your taxes, yup, we're dumb, thanks mostly to that shitty company. Oh, we do have another 'free' filing method for those with income below a certain level, which the lobbyists made sure would be handled by those same private companies. They are allowed to obfuscate and hide it, so when you search for it, you will probably end up on their main, paid product. Kind of the identical story with how our credit reports work (annualcreditreport dot com being the site the CRAs really don't want you to find)
bloppe 5mo ago
Finally being able to stop paying Intuit $150 every year as a reward for their lobbying against tax code simplification and free e-file is one of the most exciting possibilities for AI imo
- quantified 5mo ago
  To have the tax code easily dealt with and returns filed by IRS's own software will be a happy day. At that point maybe most of Intuit's employees can find other jobs.
- luis_cho 5mo ago
  Here in Portugal, tax comes pre calculated from the government on a free web application. It works very well! I just need to do very small adjustments every year before deliver the taxes.
  - rcpt 5mo ago
    In the US every Republican takes the Grover Norquist pledge to always make taxes as salient and as unpleasant as possible. The idea being that it will make voters more anti tax
    - eastof 5mo ago
      I wish this were true but they get paid by taxes. Besides, there are few things more unpleasant than having your hard earned money taken away from you, regardless of how it happens. I don't think it takes fancy paperwork to make people oppose it.
      - iteria 5mo ago
        Once you get habituated to it, it really is easy. When I was younger I was appalled by how much I was losing to taxes. Now I don't even glance at the line items. All that matters is that the end numbers. Hell, if I didn't need to enroll my kid in school which requires a receipt for property taxes, I wouldn't even know that literally 80% of my local taxes to schooling. My property taxes are pretty invisible to me. I don't file, my bank does. It really puts into frame why when a city gets old, they start cutting taxes and squeezing schools. If taxes were filed automatically, honestly, I'd pay no attention at all to them, but having to sit once a year an actually look at the amount I paid, does get me to think about taxes and what they go towards, at least a little.
colordrops 5mo ago
"happy", I don't understand how any user can be happy using these tools. Begrudging, maybe. These tools don't even need to exist. The government already knows all it needs to know and just needs your signature and a check. The only reason TurboTax exists is because of lobbying.

kev009 5mo ago

I've been using it out of laziness because I know it will import the previous year. But it is pretty buggy and getting worse, they clearly want you to move off the desktop software. If you look at the actual generated tax forms, there's a lot of extra pomp around filling out some pretty trivial forms and worksheets. If they cut the desktop software I think I will just move to something like https://www.freetaxusa.com/ https://www.freetaxusa.com/.

gdulli 5mo ago
I made the switch to FreeTaxUSA from H&R Block online this year. It was very easy and I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner. You can upload your previous year's PDF from your other software to import the data.
- eeixlk 5mo ago
  It's been good for so long I hope it doesn't get popular and go to shit. Free federal return and $15 state return if needed. If Intuit died tomorrow the world would be a better place.
  - HoldOnAMinute 5mo ago
    Not for me! I would have to hire an accountant or CPA. Then I would have to spend a lot of time and energy meeting with them and taking their phone calls. TurboTax occupies a middle ground and it saves me enormous amounts of time.
- amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
  I've been using it for a few years now and it seems fine. I'm already stuck with one Intuit product (Quicken), I'm not using any more.
  - vitaliyf 5mo ago
    Intuit sold off Quicken a decade ago, and it's been a standalone company since then: https://www.pcworld.com/article/419931/intuit-selling-quicken-to-private-equity-firm-hig-capital.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/419931/intuit-selling-quicke...
dheera 5mo ago
I was forced to use their shitty desktop version inside a Windows VM because I don't have any Windows or Mac machines, and the web version doesn't support married filing federal jointly and state separately. Their desktop version seems like a webapp embedded inside browser frame; I don't understand why they can't make it available on the web.
- goostavos 5mo ago
  Same for domestic partners. They push you into their desktop version for some reason, but the desktop version is a buggy pile of trash. I wasn't able to use it at all even on a windows machine. To their credit, they did refund the software without too much of a hassle (I expected a giant fight).
flomo 5mo ago
Disclaimer that years ago, I was impressed at how slick the TurboTax website was. So I'm surprised they even still have a desktop version (...presumably not just some electron wrapper). And given how it works, I'd guess most of your data isn't staying local for much of this.
- conductr 5mo ago
  Their website is pretty garbage IMO. Every single click is a spinner image for 1 second while the layout adjusts and fetches data. I’m not certain if this is a react or vue or whatever FE JavaScript thing but it’s extremely prevalent across the web and pretty much completely defeats the purpose of having a SPA design.
  - flomo 5mo ago
    TT was/is old-style "slick", like at the time it put my bank to shame in terms of UI. It probably wasn't using a 'popular framework' and if it was, it wasn't a naive implementation. It also was/is optimized for desktop, while many financial corps now only care about mobile. So as of last April, it was still good enough for me. Was it fast? No. Just fast enough. That's why I doubt the desktop app is really any different. They must have a bunch of API endpoints, and the 'slowness' is all on the backend.
xp84 5mo ago
So sad! I used it for at least a decade, maybe like 2006-2018 or so. Their Mac desktop software was excellent then, and no Electron tomfoolery or other nonsense. And you could just keep every year's TT app installed in case you wanted to open an old return to amend it or something. I eventually decided to abandon them a couple years after they started forcing me to buy some ultra premium pro edition because I had a small amount of "business income." Switched to Credit Karma Taxes, which Intuit then bought, but miraculously some regulator forced them to divest that product, which landed at Cash App. So I have used that (now called Cash App Taxes) since then. It's a free product and even supports business income and state taxes (IIRC, state e-filing was always an additional add-on with TT). It was a little annoying to have to re-enter more that first year, but it's done a good job of rolling forward, and not that I've ever needed it, but they also have that "Audit Defense" thing included for free, another add-on upcharge TT offered.

kburman 5mo ago

> If it stays at arm's length, and if it can "read only", then I am OK with it and actually somewhat pleased with it. This isn't actually about AI. it's just classic human psychology. You’ve had a rock-solid workflow for 25 years, so it makes total sense to be cautious and reject features you don't need. Right now, keeping it at "arm's length" and "read-only" feels safe. But that's usually just phase one. Once that initial trust is established, those boundaries naturally start to melt away. Give it a couple of tax seasons, and you’ll probably find yourself wanting it to take on more of the heavy lifting.

ForOldHack 5mo ago
We have an app for that. Would you like me to write a new one? I could feed a lot of posts into ELIZA... Yes, A rock-solid workflow for 54+ years. And ELISA.BAS is still running strong. Its just classic human psychology.

tanjtanjtanj 5mo ago

Your experience is way different from mine. I had some very basic "double check" type questions about my very straightforward taxes I threw at the bot because it was handy and it didn't seem to know that it was even related to taxes or tax software and literally directed me to seek out someone who might know about taxes. I then asked it about the weather and it was able to talk freely about that, just seems like they're reselling another model with a different prompt up front or a RAG.

xp84 5mo ago
This is so bad, it's funny. But I'd expect no less from Intuit.
hvb2 5mo ago
I feel like every time when us devs use a chatbot we think it's crap. Whatever we built ourselves though is truly next level. I have found almost every single chat experience to be lousy and hurting the brand/product...

ak217 5mo ago

I had a mixed experience with it. I think it has enormous potential but it needs to be more deeply integrated with their system (while staying read only by default, as you said).

tptacek 5mo ago

Just a quick note that you are also telling a story about how TurboTax could be overstaffed.

anonymousiam 5mo ago

I WAS a happy TurboTax customer for over 33 years, until this year when I used HR Block TaxCut to file my 2025 returns. Intuit insisted that only Windows 11 would be supported, for no technical reason whatsoever. I assume they got a payoff from Microsoft for doing this. So now I see they're laying off 3000 employees and wonder if it has something to do with poor sales of TurboTax because of their lame policy.

exmadscientist 5mo ago
They did the same with Windows 7 going to 10. (I used to use a containment VM for their products, since they aren't particularly clean installs. I used the same one year after year and was too lazy to update it.) I seem to remember that that check was easy to patch out. (As are several other checks of interest.)
karlgkk 5mo ago
> for no technical reason whatsoever Bold of you to state that without anything to back up your claim. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t, but you shouldn’t state it as fact unless you have information backing it up
- swiftcoder 5mo ago
  Name one feature of Windows 11 that could be so mandatory to a web app inside an electron shell, that it couldn't run on windows 10?
  - flomo 5mo ago
    A big feature for Microsoft is you have to pay them lots of money to still run supported Windows 10. Are you paying Intuit too? Probably not. I say again this is really a filter against "high support" customers because most of them are not technical and running derelict setups.
    - danaris 5mo ago
      That's not a technical reason.

bgro 5mo ago

If you use TurboTax, you are part of the problem.

boston_clone 5mo ago

Stop being a "happy customer". We shouldn't be paying in the first place. 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...

HoldOnAMinute 5mo ago
The alternative is a CPA/accountant, which would be annoying and time-consuming
- boston_clone 5mo ago
  No, the alternative is being able to file for free. Turbotax lobbied for decades to make sure you have to pay.

maximinus_thrax 5mo ago

> I'm a happy TurboTax customer for over 25 years. I've been using TurboTax for about 20 years now and I am not happy. I hate it with a passion, it has more dark patterns than even LinkedIn and with my basic W-2 tax return with HDHP I managed to hit all their 'know issues' 4 years in a row. They of course offered me to upgrade several times during the 'work flow' to make up for it. I loathe the existence of Intuit and I still have some hope that a future administration will kill it by having the IRS implement a basic digital product for federal tax filing for the 90% of people who use the standard deduction. Intuit should not exist in its current form in any civilized country, it is a form of cancer which only exists because our politicians are a bunch of greedy fucks.

s1artibartfast 5mo ago
I just file late every year and there are never any upgrades.

steezeburger 5mo ago

Why pay for tax software? What's wrong with the free tax submission website?

s1artibartfast 5mo ago
most are limited to a simple 1040
- ThunderSizzle 5mo ago
  Freetaxusa isn't. I've done complicated schedule K, etc forms on it
- sampullman 5mo ago
  I used the IRS free fillable forms this year and it was much easier than I expected, including contractor, investment income, and foreign income declarations.
- steezeburger 5mo ago
  That hasn't been my experience. freetaxusa has been pretty great honestly.
xp84 5mo ago
We don't have one. Are you talking about Direct File? The Trump admin killed it, though it was successfully nerfed from the start anyway by the Intuit and H&R Block lobbyists -- you couldn't even itemize deductions, or have 1099 income. If your taxes were that simple, you didn't need software, you could do your taxes with the 1040EZ form, a pocket calculator and 10 minutes. Note: If you're just taking the piss because every other country has a government method to submit your taxes, yup, we're dumb, thanks mostly to that shitty company. Oh, we do have another 'free' filing method for those with income below a certain level, which the lobbyists made sure would be handled by those same private companies. They are allowed to obfuscate and hide it, so when you search for it, you will probably end up on their main, paid product. Kind of the identical story with how our credit reports work (annualcreditreport dot com being the site the CRAs really don't want you to find)

bloppe 5mo ago

Finally being able to stop paying Intuit $150 every year as a reward for their lobbying against tax code simplification and free e-file is one of the most exciting possibilities for AI imo

quantified 5mo ago
To have the tax code easily dealt with and returns filed by IRS's own software will be a happy day. At that point maybe most of Intuit's employees can find other jobs.
luis_cho 5mo ago
Here in Portugal, tax comes pre calculated from the government on a free web application. It works very well! I just need to do very small adjustments every year before deliver the taxes.
- rcpt 5mo ago
  In the US every Republican takes the Grover Norquist pledge to always make taxes as salient and as unpleasant as possible. The idea being that it will make voters more anti tax
  - eastof 5mo ago
    I wish this were true but they get paid by taxes. Besides, there are few things more unpleasant than having your hard earned money taken away from you, regardless of how it happens. I don't think it takes fancy paperwork to make people oppose it.
    - iteria 5mo ago
      Once you get habituated to it, it really is easy. When I was younger I was appalled by how much I was losing to taxes. Now I don't even glance at the line items. All that matters is that the end numbers. Hell, if I didn't need to enroll my kid in school which requires a receipt for property taxes, I wouldn't even know that literally 80% of my local taxes to schooling. My property taxes are pretty invisible to me. I don't file, my bank does. It really puts into frame why when a city gets old, they start cutting taxes and squeezing schools. If taxes were filed automatically, honestly, I'd pay no attention at all to them, but having to sit once a year an actually look at the amount I paid, does get me to think about taxes and what they go towards, at least a little.

colordrops 5mo ago

"happy", I don't understand how any user can be happy using these tools. Begrudging, maybe. These tools don't even need to exist. The government already knows all it needs to know and just needs your signature and a check. The only reason TurboTax exists is because of lobbying.