It's tax season and I just finished my taxes. I actually enjoyed doing the taxes this year. I don’t mean paying the taxes due, but the whole tax filing process was quite painless, thanks to software such as TurboTax and the support for e-filing. Of course TurboTax has been around quite some time (I started with MacInTax on Macs and eventually moved on to TurboTax on Windows). What seems to have improved and gotten easier is the e-filing part for both Federal and state tax filings. Coupled with the ability to set up automatic debit from the checking account, I could file the taxes electronically and pay electronically without sending any paper to IRS or to my state tax agency. Of course, I printed copies for my files for my records. I could avoid that printing if only someone could safely archive my tax data online.
Intuit already archives tax returns for those who use their TurboTax for the Web online tax filing product. I was wondering if Intuit could offer the same service for those of us who use their retail TurboTax product. Intuit could archive my tax information as I e-file and then provide it back to me in a nicely formatted PDF file when I need it for some reason, like applying for a mortgage loan. It’d probably have to be a subscription-based service and we’d need good security, but that would be one way to avoid printing paper copies of tax returns for some future use. This could be something I might sign up for... assuming the price is reasonable. Looks like another business opportunity for Intuit.
Come to think of it, why archive just tax returns? Why not a whole new genre of online service that offers safe and secure archival of personal electronic records- -kind of like an online safe deposit box for electronic records? Seems to me online services like AOL and cable ISPs like Comcast with already available infrastructure could easily start offering these services on a subscription basis.
Hi Naba. Welcome to the blogosphere! I like your tax archiving idea. In fact, if Intuit is smart, they'd not only offer this basic service, they'd look to extend it with additional features. For example, would I be interested in having them analyze my tax returns for the past 10 years to point out trends, better tax-reduction options, etc.? Would I be interested in seeing how 10 years of my returns stack up against those of the general population, as they do on an annual basis with their core product? Absolutely. Further, if you choose to opt in, they could sell your name to investment firms who might want to contact you with better money management solutions. Intuit could collect a finder's fee for something like this and make some nice money, without having to do much at all...
Posted by: Joe Wikert | April 10, 2005 at 05:15 PM
Hi Joe, Thanks for getting me started on the blogosphere. I hope Intuit gets wind of our suggestions. In fact as I was thinking about avoiding printing the tax returns for archiving, I digressed into thinking why not do a whole "online safe deposit" service where you would deposit all kinds of personal records for safekeeping. In fact the security mechanism could be similar to bank safe deposit boxes, the provider has one key and you have a key and both would be needed to extract information. The keys would presumably be some sort of encryption keys, but we'll leave those details to someone else :-)
Posted by: Naba Barkakati | April 10, 2005 at 09:23 PM