

Intuit lobbies against California's free tax filing service - yummyfajitas
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ventry-intuit-20100721,0,6498588.story

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daveungerer
I think the key issue here is that when a government imposes administrative
procedures on its citizens (e.g. tax returns), it should be entirely logical
for said government to provide free software that reduces the administrative
load. In fact, this should be the norm. You can't accuse the state of anti-
competitive behaviour in this case, because the market you're serving wouldn't
even exist if they hadn't created tax filing procedures to begin with.

Or, as I like to think of it, governments, by necessity, introduce a certain
amount of friction into our lives, and have every right to try and reduce that
friction. If your business is built on reducing that friction, you simply need
to ensure that your service stays ahead of the free service, because your
profits are not a right.

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lurkinggrue
Shouldn't that read "Intuit has no idea how to compete without crying to the
government."

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jwhitlark
Well, in this case it looks like they're competing _with_ the government.
Still, I'm not a fan of what they're trying to do. Of course, the Accountant's
lobby and Congress have been conspiring to provide lifetime employment for tax
preparers for decades, so it's really not anything new.

If we really wanted to save money, we'd reform the tax system, not provide
band-aids like this program.

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ams6110
_If we really wanted to save money, we'd reform the tax system, not provide
band-aids like this program._

Exactly! As a taxpayer I want the tax code to be simplified so that I don't
need to use a computer or pay someone to prepare my return.

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rdtsc
But think about all the starving accountants. Think about their children!!!

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Aaronontheweb
This is somewhat of a silly move for Intuit - the free programs that
California aren't something that I, as a California resident, am going to
trust, namely because I don't feel that I can get support for it like how I
can from Intuit and that I don't think I can hold the state accountable like
how I can Intuit in case of a screw-up.

I suspect that there are going to be a lot of long-time TurboTax users like me
who feel the same way.

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robrenaud
There are surely some people using the free services. Presumably with time,
the user satisfaction with these programs will increase as bugs get ironed out
and word of mouth helps spread them.

You seem to believe that just because you will not use the states tax software
that no one will, which seems to be a error in generalization.

From a profit maximization perspective, I completely understand how Intuit's
rent seeking behavior is justified. On the other hand, it almost certainly
socially suboptimal.

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Aaronontheweb
From my comment

"I suspect that there are going to be A LOT of long-time TurboTax users like
me who feel the same way."

From yours

"You seem to believe that just because you will not use the states tax
software that NO ONE will, which seems to be a error in generalization."

Seems to me like you made an error in reading comprehension.

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sandGorgon
Is Calfile or ReadyReturn open source ? This would be a great asset in
deploying similar systems in... say.. developing nations.

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loewenskind
Silly. I would expect the pay services to still have an advantage because most
people are probably going to expect a free government service to not highlight
all the potential tax breaks for you.

But given Intuit has taken this tact, perhaps they don't work as hard as they
should be to justify their cost...

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lakeeffect
I dont think this about self interest, Political democracy.

I think this is California Hippies significantly price gouging the competition
out of its Highest profit margin customers. And Big Business is like you are
price gouging us, when we are suppose to be price gouging them.

Those customers that are the quick and easy returns, might file themselves
through the state. I would imagine consumers general risk aversion with
regards to government oversight would be the determinate for logical consumers
adoption of these government goods with a relevant weight with regards to the
price savings and the resulting of a comparable net return.

If the california system is off in its returns or doesn't produce returns
similar results as previous year. The customer is going to intuit next time.

The false positive is the trick for Califronia to catch in order to make their
system a success. The guy that had someone doing his taxes for years. Really
basic, but now that guy started a business, or bought a house and the
deductions are not standardized enough for the flag to call a higher level of
deductions.

This guy uses the system for years and now he finds out from his friend that
intuit does it much better, and tax preparation service steps in and wham..
They have a wow loyalty customer.

This is just market signaling that the actuary boys at Intuit think that the
free deal is going to be a winner for customers. Or false signaling, you tell
me.

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lakeeffect
Was it the hippi or big business building tools for small business that
generally offended you. Resulting in the downing voting of the analysis. For
it is definitely sound.

