Intuit & Yahoo!

biz.yahoo.com/taxes

Banner advertising in Yahoo’s stock quote service.

Intuit’s online reach is phenomenal. They’ve extended the Quicken.com franchise with co-branded sites at Excite quicken.excite.com , CNNfn cnnfn.com/quickenonfn , America Online, and the latest, a co-branded tax information and preparation site on Yahoo! biz.yahoo.com/taxes/ . Beside information, tax forms, and links to the IRS, you can use TurboTax Online to complete your taxes and file them electronically for $9.95 (for relatively simple returns).

Quicken on Excite.

Quicken on CNNfn.

Co-branded TurboTax area on Yahoo! biz.yahoo.com/taxes .

Quiz: What’s odd about the Yahoo! screenshot above? (Hint: look closely at the banner ad.)

Answer: It’s an advertisement for Intuit’s primary competitor, Kiplinger TaxCut, touting its free online filing feature. This is more than a bit confusing for the poor user who just wants to get their 1040 done.

In other news, The Wall Street Journal’s Personal Technology columnist, Walt Mossberg, gave his annual run-down of tax preparation software (WSJ 3/5/98, p. B1). He compared Intuit’s TurboTax with Kiplinger’s TaxCut, giving TurboTax the nod by a slight margin.

Mossberg noted the advent of free electronic filing from both companies, a service that had cost as much a $20. He also liked both company’s Web-based online preparation and filing systems, though he was uncomfortable with Intuit’s method of storing his confidential financial details on its server. TaxCut stores data locally, but you must download software to use it. He mentioned SecureTax’s Web-based program but dismissed it as cluttered and prone to crashing his browsers (both Navigator 4.0 and IE 4.0).

Finally, just when you thought it was safe to link your customers to TurboTax.com for tax prep, Intuit has something new in the works that your small business clients are going to love, but your board won’t. Quicken Business Cash Finder, according to Intuit’s Web site www.intuit.com/bizservices will allow users to:

Easily compare, select and apply for business credit - including loans, lines of credit, credit cards and leases - from multiple financial institutions, all at once.

Cash Finder, with a posted March launch, sounds much like the company’s mortgage emporium, Quicken Mortgage mortgage.quicken.com.

Intuit is about to hatch yet another financial emporium on the Web, this time for small businesses looking for money at www.intuit.com/bizservices .