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The Wall St. Journal is reporting that Intuit is close to announcing the purchase of Credit Karma for $7 Billion in cash & stock, announcement expected as early as Monday. I'm linking to the Bloomberg article as the WSJ is usually behind a paywall.
Intuit Inc. is close to buying Credit Karma Inc. for about $7 billion in cash and stock deal, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter it didn’t identify. The purchase, which could be announced by Monday, will push the maker of TurboTax deeper into the consumer finance space, the newspaper said. The acquisition would also be Intuit’s largest in its 37-year history.
The article mentions that tax return companies "face headwinds" for the revenue because more people use free filing services and fewer people need assistance for filing their taxes. Along these lines there's a class action lawsuit against Intuit's TurboTax for "hiding" or making it difficult to find it's free filing service. When I looked into that I read that the only reason companies like TurboTax offer free filing was the IRS was planning to develop it's own free online filing service, so they agreed to offer free basic filing to prevent that. I've used free TurboTax online for several years as I have a very basic return as semi retired with only Social Security and part-time employment income and standard decution. But even then in doing my taxes it's at least half a dozen times I have to click "No, I don't want to upgrade to your $40 premium service".
Credit Karma is currently privately held by it's founders and private equity firms. Nice payday for them!
Thanks for sharing!
Oh great "We think you're prequalified for $1,000,000.00 refund"
Interesting. Thanks for sharing
Great... I stopped using Mint after my BK because I didn't want Intuit to have access to my financial life outside of TurboTax and now they'll be able to see my credit history too.
I guess I might as well start using Mint since they're going to have all the info I don't want them to have anyway.
@DaveInAZ there are two TurboTax free services. The "free" one that tries to upsell you that they have had as long as they have had online software which is basically only good for 1040-EZ and the truly free one that allows full access to their software for those who make less than $36K AGI. If you search "IRS free file" it will take you to the IRS website that lists all those programs, some of them with higher AGI limits (IRS cap is $69K AGI) than TurboTax too. I used the IRS free file version this year and it was cake without the usual attempts to get me to buy.
@Anonymous wrote:Great... I stopped using Mint after my BK because I didn't want Intuit to have access to my financial life outside of TurboTax and now they'll be able to see my credit history too.
I guess I might as well start using Mint since they're going to have all the info I don't want them to have anyway.
@DaveInAZ there are two TurboTax free services. The "free" one that tries to upsell you that they have had as long as they have had online software which is basically only good for 1040-EZ and the truly free one that allows full access to their software for those who make less than $36K AGI. If you search "IRS free file" it will take you to the IRS website that lists all those programs, some of them with higher AGI limits (IRS cap is $69K AGI) than TurboTax too. I used the IRS free file version this year and it was cake without the usual attempts to get me to buy.
Ah, thanks a bunch for that! The other thing is the "free" TurboTax that tries to upsell you is that it limits you to $1500 in interest, over that amount requires another IRS form to list all interest payees separately and TurboTax absolutely requires you to pay for the premium service for that. When you regularly do bank account SUBs it's not hard to hit $1500 in 1099-INTs.
And I've avoided Credit Karma's free tax service because I don't want them to have all my income/tax info in addition to all the credit info they have on me. And that's why CK offers the free tax service, to "better match" you with credit offers by also having your income info. CK already uses some wage reporting service that some employer use (I forget the name) to snag your income info, I checked and my local county government employer doesn't use it. If this deal goes through I'm thinking I'll keep CK but start using a non-Intuit tax service.
@DaveInAZ wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:Great... I stopped using Mint after my BK because I didn't want Intuit to have access to my financial life outside of TurboTax and now they'll be able to see my credit history too.
I guess I might as well start using Mint since they're going to have all the info I don't want them to have anyway.
@DaveInAZ there are two TurboTax free services. The "free" one that tries to upsell you that they have had as long as they have had online software which is basically only good for 1040-EZ and the truly free one that allows full access to their software for those who make less than $36K AGI. If you search "IRS free file" it will take you to the IRS website that lists all those programs, some of them with higher AGI limits (IRS cap is $69K AGI) than TurboTax too. I used the IRS free file version this year and it was cake without the usual attempts to get me to buy.
Ah, thanks a bunch for that! The other thing is the "free" TurboTax that tries to upsell you is that it limits you to $1500 in interest, over that amount requires another IRS form to list all interest payees separately and TurboTax absolutely requires you to pay for the premium service for that. When you regularly do bank account SUBs it's not hard to hit $1500 in 1099-INTs.
And I've avoided Credit Karma's free tax service because I don't want them to have all my income/tax info in addition to all the credit info they have on me. And that's why CK offers the free tax service, to "better match" you with credit offers by also having your income info. CK already uses some wage reporting service that some employer use (I forget the name) to snag your income info, I checked and my local county government employer doesn't use it. If this deal goes through I'm thinking I'll keep CK but start using a non-Intuit tax service.
Since you can't actually opt out of being soft pulled, I'll probably do the same. It's a shame because I like TurboTax. I haven't used anything else as far back as I can remember.
What I'm trying to figure out is what about Credit Karma makes it worth $7B?
@SouthJamaica wrote:What I'm trying to figure out is what about Credit Karma makes it worth $7B?
Peddling cards and other products to those who dont know any better is a very lucrative business.
No longer near! Done deal!