2010 Tax Software Survey
2010; American Institute of Certified Public Accountants; Volume: 210; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0021-8448
Autores Tópico(s)Technology Adoption and User Behaviour
Resumo[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Journal of Accountancy and The Tax Adviser conducted a survey of AICPA members who prepared 2009 tax returns for a fee to determine which tax preparation software products were the most popular, what aspects of those products preparers liked, and what they disliked. Of the 17 products identified for the survey, Drake and UltraTax CS, a Thomson Reuters product, were in a virtual tie for first place for the highest overall rating. Drake scored the highest (4.44) on a scale of 1-5, with 5 meaning very good. That was just a hair above UltraTax CS, which received a rating of 4.43. Intuit's Lacerte product came in a close third, scoring a 4-.38, with Thomson's other package, GoSystem Tax RS, receiving the lowest score, 3.39 (for the overall ratings, see Exhibit 1). These results mirror those in the 2009 survey (see tinyurl.com/2009SoftwareSurvey) in which Drake and UltraTax again were in a virtual tie with 4.439 and 4.436, respectively, Lacerte came in third with 4.43, and GoSystem trailed the rest of the field with 3.55. However, there was a notable rise in the percentage of respondents who disliked the price of their packages and a rise in the percentage of respondents turning to chat for technical support. There has also been an increasing trend of companies making their products available online, according to feedback from vendors. METHODOLOGY The survey, which received 12,018 responses, was conducted in May 2010. The exhibits show detailed answers for 9 of the 17 products included in the survey: ATX 1040 (CCH), ATX MAX (CCH), Drake, GoSystem Tax, Lacerte, ProSeries (Intuit), ProSystem fx Tax (CCH), TaxWorks (RedGear Technologies) and UltraTax CS. Information and ratings for products that received fewer than 100 responses--CrossLink 1040 by Petz Enterprises, Great Tax by Greatland Corp., Intuit ProLine Tax Online Edition, TaxACT, TaxSimple, Tax Slayer Pro, TaxWise and TurboTax (Intuit's consumer product)--are not included in this article, but product information provided by the vendors is available on journalofaccountancy.com (see tinyurl.com/394w41p). Greatland did not submit the requested data, so information about that vendor's product is not listed. PRODUCTS AND USERS Users of CCH's ProSystem fx Tax software once again dominated the number of people completing the survey, comprising 33% of the 12,018 total respondents; 22% used Lacerte, and 19% used UltraTax CS. Last year, 28% of the 9,776 respondents used ProSystem fx Tax, 19% used Lacerte, and 14% used UltraTax. Just over half of this year's respondents prepared returns for more than 500 clients. Among those, 44% used ProSystem, 20% Lacerte, and 19% UltraTax. Among respondents who prepared returns for 500 or fewer clients, 26% used Lacerte, 21% ProSystem, and 18% UltraTax. SWITCHING PRODUCTS MOSTLY DUE TO PRICE As is generally the case, only a small minority of respondents (6%) switched their tax preparation software from another product before this year's tax season. However, that was up from the 4% of total respondents in last year's survey who said they had switched. While 89% of this year's respondents said they plan to use the same software next season, 2% will not, and the remainder said they don't know. The primary reason respondents switched was price, with 45% of switchers selecting that choice, a large increase from the 36% in last year's survey. Integration with other software came in a distant second, with 18% of switchers selecting that reason (see Exhibit 2). Consistent with the why did you switch question, by far the highest percentage of total respondents (41%) selected price as the factor they liked least about their software, up from 35% last year. Users of the more expensive products--ProSystem fx, Lacerte, and UltraTax CS--also had the highest percentage of respondents giving low scores on price. Forty-three percent of ProSystem users chose price as their least-liked feature, as did 56% of Lacerte customers and 54% of UltraTax customers (see Exhibit 3). …
Referência(s)