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TurboTax Picks Up Speed Lisa LaMotta, 03.19.08, 7:10 PM ET
Everyone knows that there are two things in life that you can't avoid: death and taxes. Intuit's TurboTax has made at least one of those things easier to stomach for 12.5 million people. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced on Wednesday that its TurboTax financial software including web units has sold 12.5 million units as of March 15, a 14.7% increase over the similar period the year prior. The programs are used to calculate U.S. federal and state taxes. Intuit (nasdaq: INTU - news - people )'sTurboTax is apparently taking a bite out of the market, causing competitor TaxCut to see its sales for the quarter ending Jan. 31 decline by 1.9%. TaxCut is a product of H&R; Block (nyse: HRB - news - people ). Despite H&R; Block's advertising effort surrounding the TaxCut software, the products saw a decline in the number of clients for the quarter by 10.8%. The data isn't directly comparable with that of Intuit because the companies are on different fiscal years. "TurboTax is the core driver of [Intuit 's] stock, as it represents well above 40% of the company's operating income," said Oppenheimer analyst Scott Schneeberger. "While concerns of slowing growth in QuickBooks merits concern, we believe it is more than priced into the shares considering the strength in TurboTax." Sales of Intuit's QuickBooks, financial software for small businesses, have been growing more slowly. QuickBooks sales grew 5.3% year-over-year in the quarter ending Jan. 31. Shares of Intuit were up 0.2%, or five cents, to $27.11, at the end of trading on Wednesday. The Associated Press contributed to this article. More On This Topic
OutFront Hello, TurboTax
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