There are still a few more months before tax season, but I wouldn’t blame you for already dreading the day when you have to sit down and slog through yet another tedious filing process.
Filing your taxes gets even more stressful when you start to worry about making mistakes. Even a small typo could lead to extra hassle weeks or months down the line.
It’s just not fun, to say the least, and the minds at Intuit, the company behind TurboTax, understand this completely. That’s why they set out to create an incredibly streamlined filing experience, one that takes less than ten minutes for simple filers. The expert they chose to make this happen is Anant Saxena.
For more than ten years, Saxena has been leading technical teams to build web-based and mobile products for major companies like Intuit, Intel, and Cricket. His work has won multiple awards, he currently holds a patent, and he’s also a member of several exclusive organizations, such as the Forbes Technology Council, the British Computer Society, and Leaders Excellence at Harvard Square.
Saxena was given the task of leading the development of the 10-minute tax filing experience for Intuit, and the first version launched earlier this year.
At the moment, there’s a prerequisite of having filed with Intuit previously, but according to Saxena, that won’t be the case with future versions.
How does it all work? Well, I’ll let Saxena explain.
Ziddu: Welcome, thanks for making the time. So, to get started, can you explain the premise of the 10-minute tax filing mobile experience?
Saxena: Tax filing can be a daunting task for most customers, who spend hours entering data into the system. Our goal was to build a no-keyboard-entry experience using prior data regarding income, etc. and leveraging artificial intelligence so that users only have to confirm the data and breeze through the experience in under 10 mins.
Ziddu: What were some of the reasons for Intuit wanting to prioritize this highly optimized mobile experience?
Saxena: Mobile is the future for the GenZ customer. A mobile user can get their favorite food delivered to their door in twenty-five minutes. They can have a car pick them up in under three minutes.
So, for this user, taking hours to file their taxes simply isn’t going to cut it. We knew that customers needed a fast and easy way to give them confidence in filing taxes.
Ziddu: What role does AI play in this project? How was it used to optimize the experience?
Saxena: Capturing the document through the phone is the most important thing in building an experience, and this is where AI comes in. It helps in building confidence scores based on extracted data.
Ziddu: Does this mobile experience require that a user has filed using Intuit software previously?
Saxena: The first launch required customers to be a prior year user, but future versions will also enable customers who haven’t filed with Intuit software before.
Ziddu: As for the actual development, what were some of the difficulties you encountered on this project, if any?
Saxena: Yes, there were a few difficulties. First, we needed to have confidence in extracting the customer’s data through image capture. Image capture technology is still evolving, and when it comes to taxes, accuracy is incredibly important.
Second, we wanted to leverage existing technical capabilities while also catering the experience for a mobile user base, meaning it needed to be fast and easy.
We were able to overcome these difficulties and create an excellent experience.
Ziddu: So, when did the 10-minute tax filing experience launch?
Saxena: The experience was launched for simple tax filers in March 2022.
Ziddu: That’s very impressive. In that case, I’d like to encourage our readers to take a look at the app for themselves. And Mr. Saxena, thank you for joining me today.
Saxena: Thank you for having me.