The TurboTax Turing Test

Dear TurboTax,

Thank you for making my taxes kind of annoying instead of a total nightmare. Sure, it cost most of my tax return to pay for the TurboTax version for under-employed freelancers, but that’s fine. You made it easier to turn a stack of 1099s and scribbled receipts into the single-digit check I’ll be receiving from the state of North Carolina. This is the very first year I’ve filed on time, and it’s all thanks to you. (Well, thanks to you and a nagging worry that I might be paying this year instead of receiving, and I’ve heard the IRS is less forgiving about late filing when one is meant to be sending them money.)

But a Captcha at the end? Seriously? A check to see if I’m human after all that? Turbo, honey, if there were a program that could find my gross income from last year’s return, the employer numbers from a half dozen 1099s, my date of birth, my social security number, my special TurboTax pin, my routing number and bank account number, and then put all those numbers into the right little boxes on a hundred different pages… well, if there were a bot like that, I don’t think it would be thwarted by a Captcha image!

Meg