TaxACT: Online Distribution Model a Good Fit for Tax Software

We offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write 'Sponsor Posts' and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products.

Tax season is upon us once again. It's when our company, TaxACT, kicks it into high gear. Given the current state of the economy, consumers will chafe at the slightest rise in costs for products and services they've become accustomed to using.

TaxACT, which develops and distributes tax preparation software, has managed to avoid the backlash against other tax preparation companies that have introduced added costs to their software this year. We've done this by sticking closely year after year to our distribution model, which is to bypass brick-and-mortar stores and sell our software exclusively online. The strategy has allowed us to keep our costs down and our customers happy.

TaxACT has been providing online tax preparation software for over a decade now. Since 1998, we've helped US taxpayers file millions of tax returns. According to Hitwise, we have become the #2 destination for online tax preparation, which we're proud of considering the brand power of our competitors.

Value is where we see our competitive advantage. Our most expensive product, the TaxACT Ultimate Bundle, includes both federal and state tax-return preparation and e-filing at a cost of $16.95 ($19.95 for the downloadable version). The program is built as a complete tax preparation package for taxpayers, with options for simple to very complex returns.

Efficiency is important, too, of course. Most people now realize that filing their tax return online is much faster than doing it by regular post. And with the IRS offering direct deposit as an option, taxpayers can receive their returns in as few as 8 days. That's why more and more people are turning to online solutions.

The key, though, for us to providing value to our customers without sacrificing quality or raising our prices is in our distribution model. We do not sell an actual packaged product in retail stores. You'll never see TaxACT on a store shelf. Instead, we offer it as a secure online service.

Customers have the option to download the software or order a CD directly by mail. But avoiding the retail shelf allows us to provide advanced tax preparation software at an affordable price. And the model has allowed us to keep our prices stable for the past two years.

With the economy as it is, value is a huge concern for most taxpayers. Being able to keep costs down by using an online distribution model is allowing TaxACT to weather this economic storm better than many other tax software companies.

Now get latest IRS tax forms 2013 and 2013 IRS Tax news