Lessons from the cloud: How I got my TurboTax data back

I received an email today from Bob Meighan at Intuit that will come as skilful news for anyone who uses TurboTax Online and needs access to the data files used to create a previous yr'southward revenue enhancement return.

Currently, TurboTax Online only athenaeum a PDF image of your taxation return. Intuit will now archive your return in the native .taxation information format besides. "This will exist functional within the next week," said Meighan, vice president, TurboTax at Intuit.

Why it matters

Why does that thing? If you file a return and later demand to improve it, you can use TurboTax software to practice that -- and at no additional charge. Just you accept to start with your original return, and for that you demand the data file. A PDF is a snapshot of the final return, but information technology doesn't tell you how you got there. Without the .tax file you must recreate the return, which means answering all of the questions and filling out all of the forms exactly equally you did it before. That's not fun, peculiarly if y'all have a return with several schedules.

Meighan was responding to my blog post on Monday today in which I described my travails trying to go access to my 2009 TurboTax data file so that I could file an amended return.

"Based on your feedback, the engineers have added the capability," Meighan said.

Cool.

"Just kidding. My previous begging and that of others finally prevailed. This functionality was on the list this year," he added.

How to get your data back

While I was delighted to see this feature added, it comes too late for me because the new archive will but contain data files for revenue enhancement year 2010 and newer. But I was withal able to become the data file from 2009. If you used TurboTax, if you filed electronically -- and if you speak to the correct tech support people -- they can retrieve the data file for yous.

Getting my return involved sending an email with the statement "I Robert Mitchell authorize Intuit to release my taxation return to me," forth with my total name, social security number and a copy of my driver's license. I was besides asked to cite data from ii lines on my return, as a style to verify who I am. You can exercise the same, but y'all may have to be persistent: Before I spoke with Bob, the three people I communicated with in technical support had no idea this was available. If all else fails, Meighan says, ship a annotation to Taxation Advocate and he will make sure information technology gets addressed.

How to download your return in .tax format

If Intuit is going to keep archival returns for customers, it should go along data files as well as PDF images of prior year revenue enhancement returns online. It's done so, and that'due south great. Merely it should likewise make darned certain the program guides users through downloading a local re-create of both the PDF and .taxation versions of the file. Right at present information technology prompts you to download a PDF, which is swell for viewing and press your return but no substitute for the data file. You can download a copy of the data file when you create your return, but it'south not clear when you click on "Save render to figurer" from the Dwelling house tab whether you're creating a .revenue enhancement file or a PDF. In other parts of the program saving the return creates a PDF past default.

So why doesn't Intuit exercise it this way? "Personally I am strongly in favor of providing the data file when customers download the PDF," says Meighan. "Information technology's just must a matter of disarming anybody else. We get and so few requests for this why should nosotros spend the engineering science fourth dimension to do this? It's not that we're opposed to it."

I could see how irresolute the service to annal data file would accept some work, but prompting people to save a local re-create of the data file, and making it clear how exercise to so shouldn't take that much work, I said. After all, the capability is already there. Information technology'southward just not clearly identified.

If TurboTax is going to archive the information file in the cloud I recollect that's fine. But information technology should likewise prompt the user to relieve a local copy in both format(s) and clearly explain how to do so.

"I agree," Meighan says. "It's not a lot of work just change the interview screen. The functionality is already there. It's a matter of making it more than transparent."

Understand that cloud is different

Peradventure function of the challenge is that consumers take never had to think most these things earlier. Earlier I simply purchased shrink-wrapped software that ran on PCs. Had I used a version of TurboTax for Windows I would not be having this conversation considering I would accept directly concrete control of the program and the information.

Today, with software as a service, the tax preparation process is faster, easier and more automated than always. But the user cedes control over the application and data to the deject. It'south important for both the users and the vendors to fully understand the implications of that.

Robert Fifty. Mitchell writes on a wide range of topics, including analytics, emerging technologies, green IT and data centers.

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