“What we launched was not very good and by the second peak [of tax season], it was appreciably better,” Johnson said during Intuit’s Investor’s Day webcast this week. The result was 95 percent of professionals involved said they want to participate again in 2019.

Given that experience, “It will give us a very fast start,” Johnson said.

TurboTax live was designed to let consumers who have occasional questions to access professional advice by pressing a link within the application. The company expects to expand the program for the upcoming tax season.

During the recent Citi 2018 Global Technology Conference, Johnson said the program was available only during the first two months of the 2018 season by plan and that Intuit did not aggressively market it. He said that will change.This week, Johnson described intuit’s approach on the introduction.

“We muscled it into the market,” Johnson said “It wasn’t optimized/”

Johnson indicated Intuit did not anticipate which consumer segments would be attracted. Live was not available for free customers, and there was “no on ramp for simple customers and we didn’t have a mobile offering,” he said.

Bob Scott

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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