[Amezarak]

Intuit isn't the good guy here, but they get a ridiculous amount of hate proportional to their role in the system, and they did actually make things better. The status quo until consumer tax filing software like TurboTax was people paying accountants and accounting firms hundreds of dollars to prepare their very simple taxes after the rumor mill + accountant ads put the fear of God in them that the IRS would destroy their lives.

Millions of people still do this to this day, and it's very hard to talk them out of it. Of course, if you have a complicated tax situation, hiring an accountant is worth it. But I'm talking about people with a W2 and maybe a few 1099s being convinced that even TurboTax is a bad idea because "my guy can get me so much more" or "the IRS is going to jail me if I make a mistake in the software."

[ghaff]

At some point, the ubiquity of shopping mall accountants (e.g. H&R Block) convinced a lot of people that they were idiots to do their own taxes by hand. Personally I piggybacked off my parents' accountant and still use the same firm. At this point, it almost certainly makes sense for me to use an accountant but I could probably have just used tax software for less money at least for a time.