A practical path for ItsDeductible: sunset with an open source release

It's clear Intuit has been looking to wind down ItsDeductible for some time (first in 2022 and now again in 2025). Even if us users persuade them to keep it alive for another season, that only postpones what seems inevitable. Someone inside Intuit wants this great tool gone.

I understand the raw financial logic. At a unit level, ItsDeductible may not appear to justify ongoing spend. Still, the product has outsized strategic value: it helps customers, it supports charitable giving, and most of all it contributes to the perceived completeness of your ecosystem (even though Intuit has not done anything to promote it in years, trying to make it go away).

There is a path that resolves the cost burden while preserving that value: sunset the hosted service and release the core code as open source.

Your legal departments not unwarranted legal concerns are very manageable:

• Competition: Your competitors already understand what ItsDeductible does. And users of those services already use ItsDeductible since it is not tied only to your ecosystem.

• Intellectual Property: A basic code release does not reveal sensitive IP beyond what is observable in the product today.

• Liability: Use a standard license (for example, MIT or Apache 2.0), include a clear no warranty clause, retain the ItsDeductible trademark, and provide brand use guidelines. Archive the code “as is,” scrub secrets, and exclude proprietary data or third-party assets.

How this helps Intuit

1. Goodwill and legacy. You preserve customer trust and signal that Intuit supports tools that make charitable giving easier. Seriously. You already know most people do not like doing taxes anyway, by making one part of the arduous task a bit easier people will always be thankful (and more inclined to buy into your ecosystem).

2. Real cost relief for Intuit (what someone on the inside really wants). You end the obligation to maintain and host the service while giving the community a chance to carry it forward.

3. Positive brand association. By keeping your brand referenced in the release notes and repository readme, Intuit remains part of the story even after the service sunsets.

4. Ecosystem benefits. Charities value the behavior ItsDeductible enables. A community-maintained version keeps those benefits alive.

How to execute with minimal expense:

• Publish a read-only repository with the core codebase, minus proprietary data and credentials.

• Add a short migration note that explains what is included, what is not, and where community maintainers can organize.

• Don't be stingy. The easier it is to pick up the pieces, the more benefit it is to Intuit.
• Have an overlap period. I mean, seriously, discontinuing mid-calendar year? Announce that you will support ItsDeductible through the end of 2025, WHILE you are transitioning the code to open source.

• Retain the ItsDeductible name as a trademark and set clear rules for use of Intuit marks.

• Invite stewardship: ask for expressions of interest from nonprofits and volunteer maintainers.

• Optionally fund a brief transition period to answer architectural questions while the community stands up its own build (this is Legend! and will bring tons of goodwill. And I bet there are nerds in Intuit who hate to see this go and would love to see it continue on)

If the community picks it up, the tool continues to deliver value at no cost to Intuit. If no one does, the outcome is the same as a hard discontinuation, BUT with the added benefit that Intuit tried to preserve something customers and charities clearly appreciate.

People will respect that.

Thank you for considering a graceful sunset that protects users, charities, and your brand.