I know. Exactly. "If form 4868 = true, then efile=free" is NOT complicated code.
TurboTax doesn't HAVE to be that badly designed. I have a feeling that the people within Intuit making these decisions are living in their own little world (not uncommon in IT), but because TurboTax was so early to the market they have been able to get away with a lot of poor business decisions and still make money.
IBM suffered a lot of the same problems until they had a rather significant purge of the old guard; by the early 2000s there were mid-level management types who couldn't manipulate the basic attributes of Power Point long after drug sales reps were making it sing, dance, and play videos. I think Intuit has the same structural problem, demonstrated by the fact that they are SO unresponsive to the basic needs of their customers.
E-filing; it's a thing.
