So much for economical tax preparation software this year
Posted By RichC on March 26, 2017
Two years ago, Intuit’s Turbo Tax software tried their "money grab" in attempted to strong-arming their long-time and new customers into paying substantial more to use their software to file their 2014 taxes. 
The CEO took to the Internet and made an apology and stepped up to Intuit’s greedy "mistake." One would think that competitors might have learned from such "mistake" … NOPE, not in the case for TaxAct (the company I switched to after the gouging attempt by Intuit). This year, there has not been the same outrage, likely because it impacts only their download products and TaxAct is a smaller company, but a quick glance shows me a similar money grab (click image right – which doesn’t even include an additional $19.99 state filing for 2016!). For those comparing … it will cost me nearly twice as much for the same packages as last year!
To be fair, TaxCut has lowered prices on their online offerings, so IF you are able to use them, you may save a few dollars, but if you want downloads and prefer working off-line, look out!
I double checked to be sure I was comparing "apples to apples" and that the prices have been jacked up … and below was their 3/25/2017 email answer … in short "YES":
Dear TaxAct® Customer,
As part of our continued efforts to provide you with the best possible products and experience, we’ve made a few changes for the upcoming tax season; which affected the pricing of our current products. These changes have resulted in some customers paying more than in prior years, many also pay less or nothing at all.
TaxAct offers what we and our customers feel to be a quality product at a very reasonable price when evaluating comparable packages. Our products are fairly priced when considering the features and services provided and as such, we are unable to match the price of products with different feature and service offerings.
While we encourage our customers to evaluate a number of products available in order to choose the one right for them, we are confident that after comparing TaxAct products and features to other products, TaxAct will emerge as a great value for the price.
Keep in mind, you may receive a brief email survey to submit feedback regarding the support provided to you as well as our TaxAct services. We would appreciate it if you would take a few moments to complete this survey, once it is received.
Jon L.
TaxAct Customer Support
HC-329
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