A couple of friends of mine, Rashmi Sinha and Jon Boutelle, have created an interesting new way to do market research testing using gaming in place of the traditional survey questionaires. I wish the Feds, or at least one of the software companies like Intuit or H&R Block would do the same for taxes. Hey, there’s a Web 2.0 company idea I’m throwing out there for anyone to pick up on, free of charge. Well, you should give me a copy but other than that free.
I used H&R Block’s TaxCut this year, 1/10th the price of the CPA charged me each of the last few, and while the interview style process is a lot better than doing the work manually it still has no style or flare and doesn’t even do as much for the user as it could. For instance, there are places where information can be reused (company names, addresses) or easier access to forms provided (filling in previous year data). In the end I can only hope their software doesn’t have bugs affecting the calculations because it says I have a whopper of a federal refund coming. And I’d hate to have to give it back.
BillSaysThis 