Intuit's highly publicized use of tax professionals to advise its TurboTax customers has not met the goals of CEO Brad Smith. In the company's recent earnings webcast about financial results for fiscal 2013, Smith said the program would have significant changes for the next tax season. Given the attention that Intuit gave the program, any change would be a significant about face.
"It's not a complete elimination. I think you'll see a different approach in how we go to market," Smith told Wall Street analysts.
Intuit first offered such advice during the 2012 tax season. However, while those who used the service worked well for those who utilized it, simply providing advice to existing users was not Smith's goal.
Calling results a "mixed bag", Smith continued that "it has not done the job in terms of helping us accelerate the shift out of tax stores and into software." In response to an analyst's question about whether Intuit might charge for advice or that it would be free up to a certain point, Smith said those methods and others are under consideration.
Smith's characterization follows a season in which Intuit's use of CPAs and Enrolled Agents was highly publicized via television ads that suggested competitors were using nonprofessionals for whom the tax business was a part-time job. That drew a law suit from H&R Block that unsuccessfully sought to have the ads withdrawn.
Bob Scott has provided information to the tax and accounting community since 1991, first as technology editor of Accounting Today, and from 1997 through 2009 as editor of its sister publication, Accounting Technology. He is known throughout the industry for his depth of knowledge and for his high journalistic standards. Scott has made frequent appearances as a speaker, moderator and panelist and events serving tax and accounting professionals. He has a strong background in computer journalism as an editor with two former trade publications, Computer+Software News and MIS Week and spent several years with weekly and daily newspapers in Morris County New Jersey prior to that. A graduate of Indiana University with a degree in journalism, Bob is a native of Madison, Ind
