TurboTax will no longer let you back up your data to the cloud.
Those were the rumors flying last week. It seemed like a bold move for a technology-based company – especially at a time when more companies seem to be moving towards the cloud: just last month, Dropbox reported that it has more than 400 million registered users and it’s believed that Apple’s iCloud service has more than 500 million users.
So why move away from the cloud? I reached out to Intuit for answers and found out that the real story is quite different from the rumors.
In 2014, Intuit conducted a small pilot program for some TurboTax desktop customers to better understand their interest in storing their tax return in the cloud. The online storage, called Backup to Cloud, was an additional option included with the 2014 TurboTax CD/download software for both Windows and Mac. The desktop software automatically stores your tax return locally on your computer. The addition option, as part of the pilot, also allowed users to store tax returns in the cloud. At the end of the pilot, the cloud storage option ended.
The pilot did not affect TurboTax Online users. It only affected desktop products, meaning those you bought out of the box or downloaded onto your computer. TurboTax did not release a statement about the end of Backup to Cloud but rather communicated directly via email with affected customers.
TurboTax isn’t saying how many people participated in the pilot (they don’t release pilot numbers as a rule) but chances are that it was a small percentage of their customer base. Statistically, as e-filing increases, many users simply opt for online software instead of heading to a store for a boxed copy or downloading software.
And, of course, e-filing is definitely increasing. As of May 31, 2015, nearly 87% of all returns received by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) were filed electronically. Of those returns, 49,195,000 returns, or about 41%, were self-prepared using taxpayer software like TurboTax. The IRS doesn’t say how many of those were filed using TurboTax, but according to Intuit, TurboTax products are continuously ranked as the #1 best-selling tax software.
Intuit had urged affected users to take action before July 21 (that’s today). The option to backup to the cloud for those in the pilot is no longer available. If you missed the deadline and did not previously save a copy of your return, Intuit suggests using instructions posted on their site to request a copy of your return from the IRS.
