The Look of Tax Software

Accounting Technology, December, 2004

The face of tax preparation software is changing. In fact, the face of desktop software in general is changing and tax software is part of a bigger trend as applications increasingly take on the appearance of Microsoft products.

Proprietary word processing packages are either giving way to the ubiquitous Microsoft Word, or at least getting friendlier with Word, and many tax software packages are becoming friendlier with Word and Excel. The rationale is to give users an interface they are familiar with, and there are few in business who are not familiar with the Microsoft desktop applications. So CCH is adding a worksheet interface for ProSystem fx, while Intuit chairman Scott Cook has publicly hinted that his company's ProSeries will get an Outlook interface sometime soon....