Message from Intuit

Received the following e-mail message yesterday.

Dear Valued Customer,

I know that you, like all tax professionals, work long and hard to make your practice successful. So I was surprised to learn that in recent years nearly 700,000 tax preparers spent up to 1 billion hours annually on collecting client data and entering it into their software.¹

At an average billable rate of $100/hour for tax professionals, that's nearly $100 billion worth of time that could have been spent elsewhere.² Or, put another way, some tax professionals could be losing almost $140,000 a year on time wasted doing data collection and data entry.

We think that's wrong and you have every right to expect us to do something about it. And we are. Several months ago, we put the extensive resources and talents of our professional tax group to work and tasked them with developing product improvements that could help you get back that lost time and make more income.

We're midway through our process, but the results thus far are so exciting that I'd like to share with you some insight into three new areas where we are investing in our Lacerte® and ProSeries® desktop products and our Intuit Tax Online® offering.

The first focus area is streamlining the tedious and time-consuming work you face every tax season just collecting client data and entering it into your tax software.

The second focus area will be providing you with information, insights and solutions at just the right moment, so you can make immediate decisions that can save valuable hours and help you be more profitable.

The third focus area is one that has me really enthusiastic to see in action. We know it can be difficult to grow a tax practice, land new clients, and find new, simple services to offer. So we are creating a series of products that can help you both attract new clients and expand the services you can offer to existing clients.


The bottom line: we won't stop until we've helped you get back some of those wasted hours, and put more money in your pocket.

And while I'm excited to announce our new efforts, I would be remiss if I didn't mention our continued investment in core functionality, which I know is critically important to you. With each tax season, we continue to make our offerings more comprehensive with additional automated forms. We also achieve greater ease of use by including more time-saving features, and increase accuracy by improving our diagnostics.

Our Intuit tax products are strong, and our continuing goal has always been to bring you new innovations that help keep your tax practice strong as well. Because when you are successful, we have done our job.

To learn more, click here. Also, in the coming weeks, be sure to look for additional details on our new efforts.

We truly value your business and your trust, and we look forward to serving you in tax year 2014.

With Sincere Regards,

CeCe Morken
General Manager
Intuit Professional Tax Group

1 Source: http://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/Re ... Statistics

2 Source: http://www.nsacct.org/life-and-taxes/li ... epfees2013

I think I'm gonna hurl.

The man say he does not want to waste the professional's time but then he wastes the professional's time. What's the big secret? Why doesn't he spill the beans? How do you get something from A to B without getting something from A to B? Have they invented a new mouse trap or have they cooked up a trap for the unleary?

Footnote 1 does not address the statement "tax preparers spent up to 1 billion hours annually on collecting client data and entering it into their software."

Too bad I am not in college. This paragraph would have been fun to analyze in my critical-thinking class:

At an average billable rate of $100/hour for tax professionals, that's nearly $100 billion worth of time that could have been spent elsewhere. Or, put another way, some tax professionals could be losing almost $140,000 a year on time wasted doing data collection and data entry.

Who is this man? Where does he hide? Probably in the executive suite wrapped in luxury or out at the country club brooding over his scotch whiskey and tipping the caddy to sneak his ball back into the fairway. It's talk like this letter that turned my practice from prime rib to Spam.

CeCe is a woman, but no matter. Her performance review must be coming up. With nothing accomplished, grandiose plans will have to do.
http://accountants.intuit.com/tax/lp/pr ... d=75968105

I watched some of the Scaling New Heights speakers on a streaming feed and the last one was the CEO of Intuit, Brad Smith. He made it very clear they are moving just about everything to third party vendors to let them come up with solutions and integrations. About the only thing they seem interested in focusing on are the cloud-based QB and Tax Online.

There was also a very not-so-subtle undercurrent that they expect accountants to not be "accounting" for much longer but instead to be consulting. Of course, given how hard Intuit is trying to push professionals out of the "accounting" business by marketing so many DIY products directly to consumers, that school of thought wasn't very surprising. After his speech, there was an open Q&A session with the professionals present and I was extremely disappointed none of them had either the foresight or courage to point that "conflict of interest" out to him and get a comment. You can't really be "for" professionals when you are trying to undercut their market.

The real question to ask

How much are you going to charge us now?!!

He made it very clear they are moving just about everything to third party vendors to let them come up with solutions and integrations.

I often wonder if Lacerte & ProSeries would be sold off soon. Lacerte would make a nice top-tier product for Drake. Probably would be good for Lacerte users, too.

I don't care what sex the man is, he'll have to wake up early to pull a fast one on me. If you want to sell me something, show it to me and I'll decide if I want it and I don't want any 1.3, 2.4, new and improved 8.1 or anything of the sort. Get it right the first time or don't come back. I'm not signing on for anything anymore unless it a set term, non-renewable. I signed up for pest control I can't remember how many years ago and a strange man still comes around the house sometimes and sprays water around in the corners and where he's not wanted. I got bit by a spider last week while I was laid out on the couch napping. What good has it done me? The company has changed hands four or five times and I don't even know who to call to cancel the service! It's hard to find the facts today and if you sign something it's h*ll to get out of it. There is no fact of the matter anymore.

The bottom line: we won't stop until we've helped you get back some of those wasted hours completely drained your bank account on our increasingly expensive software with ever-decreasing customer support, and put more your money in your our pocket.

There you go. Fixed that for you, Intuit.

Last week I switched from Lacerte (been with Lacerte since 1989) to Ultra Tax. My main reason was the DMS being discontinued. Before I switched, I called my rep at Lacerte to see if they are going to be working with e-file cabinet as I was told when I bought e-file cabinet (I can't use Smart Vault because I don't want cloud) he said they are making a real effort to work with 3rd party vendors so e-file cabinet needed to contact them. He told ME I should contact e-file cabinet and tell them to contact Lacerte about integrating their products. So I did. E-file cabinet told me they have been trying, but Lacerte is only interested in working with Smart Vault, and they were turned down. So I forwarded that email to my rep and he said he wasn't surprised, and offered me a deal to cut my renewal by $2,000. I turned it down, I'm just sick of Intuit. Time for a change.

The bottom line: we won't stop until we've helped you get back some of those wasted hours completely drained your bank account on our increasingly expensive software with ever-decreasing customer support, and put more your money in your our pocket.

There you go. Fixed that for you, Intuit.

Thank you very much! Do you think anyone in the business really believes this pile of doggy doo doo? Right off the bat they wasted 10 minutes of your time reading it!!! (although I have to admit it made me chuckle!

700,000 tax preparers spent up to 1 billion hours

Wow! That's an average of, like, 1400 hours--some of you guys must not have a life! Well, I guess you have to work late, because according to this Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_preparation a Pell Research study says tax prep is a six billion dollar industry, so that's only, like, six bucks an hour!

In another lifetime I did some marketing work with a genius. One of the many things that he taught me is that lawyers and accountants often want to write their own copy and it always looks like an accountant or lawyer wrote it, and it's always unreadable. The text is typically heavy, dense, and unreadable - like they get paid by the word or something. Or it might be that they've paid for this much ---> <---- display space and doggone it! they're going to use every square millimeter. I couldn't even read through the OP to see how many rules it violated.

The bottom line: we won't stop until we've helped you get back some of those wasted hours completely drained your bank account on our increasingly expensive software with ever-decreasing customer support, and put more your money in your our pocket.

There you go. Fixed that for you, Intuit.

Frickin' Brilliant, TW. Brilliant. Much like Disney, Intuit wants ALL our money. And no apologies, no kiss.