Death and Refunds: The 2007 Tax Season
Written by Bryan Donovan (contact - e-mail) -- May 4th, 2007 |
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While it’s said that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes, the internet has at least given consumers a multitude of options for filing, and, unfortunately, the uncertainty of knowing if they will make the filing due date.
The most interesting aspect of the season from our perspective was a campaign by TurboTax**. Which sponsored a consumer generated media contest this year that was judged by Vanilla Ice (whoa, flashback) and offered a $25,000 cash prize to the winner, who appeared to have mad game. With its own Microsite and YouTube channel generating significant traffic, this campaign finally brought humor to one of the least pleasurable financial activities ever.
What else did we see?
The year over year change at these three major Tax information and electronic filing sites was varied.
- While irs.gov remains the definitive of information for tax filers, there was little change in the number of unique visitors from the 2006 tax season to the 2007.
- The volume of visitors to HRBlock.com (H & R’s e-filing and informational site) declined slightly year over year.
- Intuit.com, where TurboTax users e-file, saw growth of over 33%.
While the “Tax Rap” Campaign may not have been a huge driver of traffic to Intuit, consumer word of mouth may have played a different role: talking up the ease of filing. The amount of time spent on Intuit’s TurboTax decreased by about 7 minutes year over year (see chart below), indicating a drastically improved filing process (except for last minute e-filers).
The real conclusion? People mostly file really early, or really late. The chart below shows daily attention to the three major tax sites over the last 180 days. Because people on both intuit.com and HR block.com can actually file on the sites, attention trends are primarily tied to efilers.
It makes sense that the first peak would be larger as a result of more research being done early in the season while filing, which often takes less time, is done later in the season. I don’t know about you, but when I’m expecting a refund I file as early as I can get my hands on my W-2. This put me in the first peak this year, both gathering information and filing.
*In this blog, tax seaon is defined as January through March of each year.
**Thanks to our friend Jim Bruene for bringing this to our attention through his NetBanker blog
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May 4th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Maybe peeople are relying less on Intuit and TurboTax because the website and software are also trying to help others get their hands on our money. Witness the TurboTax Refund Bonus program that I wrote about at http://www.millennialliving.com/E-gov/turbotax_taxrefundbonusplan.htm
he program allows you to buy merchant cards at a discount with your refund dollars. Nothing wrong with that if you did an IRA and paid down high credit card debt etc. TurboTax is silent on that matter.