
Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken - doppp
http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/20/intuit-will-sell-off-quicken-its-once-core-30-year-old-personal-finance-software/
======
sschueller
Looks like they are not worried about taxes ever becoming simpler. Intuit has
spent about $11.5 million on federal lobbying in the past few years to kill
bills that would have simplified taxes. [1]

[1] [http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-
turbotax-...](http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-
fought-free-simple-tax-filing)

~~~
tptacek
If $2.3MM/yr over 5 years is enough to reshape the trajectory of fundamental
laws in this country, why aren't people just Kickstarter-ing cannabis
decriminalization, marriage equality, and copyright law changes?

My point is: that's not a lot of money. Not that I think you can get important
changes done for $2.3MM.

There is real conservative opposition to return-free filing. For instance,
conservatives in general think the tax code is both too complex and too
onerous. In a return-free system, citizens are given a summarized bill and
encouraged not to consider the line items. The concern is that the bill is
unfair, and the less citizens have it shoved in their face, the less likely we
are to get a fairer tax code.

(I think this is silly and that we are probably under-taxed, but I understand
the logic.)

~~~
michaelt

      why aren't people just Kickstarter-ing cannabis
      decriminalization, marriage equality, and
      copyright law changes?
    

I would imagine it's a lot cheaper to bribe a politician when:

1\. The bribe doesn't get any publicity/press coverage/cause any
embarrassment. Campaign donations from big corporations are "business as
usual" and the politicians don't look corrupt in the press - but do the same
way in a public, attention-grabbing way and the guy looks bad if he accepts.

2\. The vote you want to affect is low key and doesn't contradict the
politician's public position on major issues. Changing a politician's opinion
on the Concrete Masonry Products Research Education and Promotion Act of 2015
would be much cheaper than changing their opinion on overturning Roe vs Wade

3\. You want to maintain the status quo. Creating new legislation and getting
it through the system is a bunch of work - compared to turning up on the vote
day and saying 'no'.

4\. There are future votes and future bribes to look forward to. If I give a
politician $200,000 to vote a certain way, he might take the donation then
vote a different way - and if I ask him to vote that way and promise him the
money afterwards, I might refuse to pay after he votes. But if there are 10
votes and I donate $20,000 before each one if he voted how I wanted in the
last vote? Then neither of us can screw the other over too badly because we
know we'll be making the same deal next year.

5\. There's aren't other well-funded lobbyists bidding against you. Because if
there are you'll need to get into a bidding war and they might have a lot of
money to throw around. If people who vote against copyright extension get
$20,000 from me but people who vote for it get $50,000 from Disney I'm going
to need to up my game - and Disney probably has pretty deep pockets.

TLDR: I'd expect cannabis decriminalisation or copyright law reform to cost a
lot more than blocking tax code simplification.

With that said, if someone would like to organise an attempt I certainly think
it would be interesting to see if a kickstarter-like approach would work.

~~~
fredkbloggs
It's even simpler, really, and a classic and well-researched defect in
representative democracy. Any time there is an interest group (which can be
one person, one corporation, an industry, etc.) that wants something that is
highly advantageous to itself and costs a very large number of other people a
very small amount of money each, that interest group will always pay a small
portion of its benefit to politicians for support, and politicians will always
support it. This is because it's not worthwhile for millions of individuals to
band together and defeat something that costs each one only a few cents.
Literally, the time it takes (whether to make a donation, write a letter, or
make whatever other trivial contribution) exceeds the value of shutting down
the special interest.

Intuit likes income-tax returns and tax laws in general that are complex. But
there are hundreds of other special interests, most very narrow, that favor
specific bits of the tax code and will lobby to keep them. Collectively, these
things cost us trillions of dollars, but individually they are impossible to
defeat because no single one is large enough to be worthwhile.

This happens in all representative democracies where tax law is set by the
legislature. There are ways to avoid it, but there is currently no state that
has tried to do so (probably because this problem is extremely profitable for
the political industry).

------
euroclydon
I still love Microsoft Money for personal finances. A large DB can get slow,
but an SSD fixes that.

Plus, it's free:

[http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/search/Results.aspx?q=microso...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/search/Results.aspx?q=microsoft%20money&form=DLC)

~~~
steverb
Money doesn't work on Windows 10. Or at least, I couldn't get it to work for
me.

~~~
scholia
Apparently it needs a small registry change:

[https://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-
US/479281b2-90f9-42ca...](https://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-
US/479281b2-90f9-42ca-85f7-644fc6e1e5c3/download-microsoft-money-installation-
files-solve-activation-and-some-other-errors?forum=money)

Note: I don't use Money and I have not done it.

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rlvesco7
It would be awesome if financial companies were required to provide free api's
along with the full financial history. Currently companies like BOA charge you
for automated access to your account and others actively limit Mint, for
instance, from retrieving information on behalf of customers.

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e40
I switched from Quicken to Moneydance some time ago. The export/import worked
fine. I had been a Quicken customer a 10-15 years and I was just so infuriated
with all the UI churn to justify the upgrades _and_ their turning off online
transactions after a few years, FOR NO REASON.

MD is written in Java, it's simple, it's supported, they come out with new
versions, and you can upgrade if you want.

I am not at all affiliated with the company that makes Moneydance. Just a
completely satisfied customer who didn't want to pay Intuit another penny, for
the rest of my life.

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kumarm
Demand Force one of the asset they are trying to sell was acquired just 3
years ago for 450 Million.

You would think executives making these decisions will have some consequences
:).

------
pgrote
What is a good, active cloud based personal finance software service? The ones
I have come across look ok, but aren't actively developed.

~~~
cdcarter
YNAB has dropbox synch and it's ideal.

~~~
jerrac
YNAB is definitely a good product. I use it, and got my brother and parents to
use it as well.

My only complaint is that I'd rather not rely on a third party like dropbox
for sync, and I'd like a Linux version.

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femto113
Doesn't say in the article but I assume they are keeping Mint? Desktop apps
like Quicken (and the similar Microsoft Money) were dead to me the minute that
came on the scene (almost 9 years ago at this point).

~~~
weinzierl
I'm a happy user of many web-based services, but why would anyone give all
their personal financial data to single company? Ok, the success of Mint
proves me wrong, I just don't get it.

It's not only that they can use your data to build and sell a profile, there
is a realistic chance that the data gets leaked.

~~~
digitalzombie
> Ok, the success of Mint proves me wrong, I just don't get it.

Well for one thing people are lazy and Mint devs actually take care of
handling logins for all of those banks, credit cards companies, and credit
unions.

I'm not entirely sure if there's any other alternative non web base software
that can do this. I would assume those apis are different between all those
companies.

Sure I can input my stuff manually but then again I'm lazy.

~~~
joshyeager
Quicken can download transactions from every bank I've used. From what I can
tell, it uses the same APIs that Mint does. But the data is never stored
anywhere but my home server.

~~~
jungturk
Quicken's bank feeds are processed the same way mint's are - through an Intuit
service that makes the call to the financial institution. That call ostensibly
adds other functional value (transaction categorization, friendly names for
businesses), but Intuit's in custody of your financial data (and passwords) to
perform that feature.

Fortunately, Intuit's also (currently) takes lots of care to ensure proper
data-at-rest and in-flight custodial procedures, but you're still trusting
someone to do things right.

~~~
someguydave
Also, I'm not sure that your bank or credit union or especially credit card
warrants all that much trust either - what are the chances that they could
resist a well-planned hack? Or that they aren't already selling your data?

At some point, it's better that you have a copy of your data too if all the
third-party advertisers already have one.

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bitcuration
The tax law should be as simple as this: there is a BGI (basic guaranteed
income) and every dollar above at a fix percentage regardless how wealthier
you are.

