The answer to your question is that, although TurboTax (part of
Intuit, Inc.) is both the developer and publisher of TurboTax software, we act as well in a merchant capacity to sell our software directly
to customers. We also work with many other retailers and authorized
vendors. Those include such well-known companies as Walmart,
Amazon.com, and Costco (just to name a few).
While we at
Intuit may suggest or recommend retail prices to our independent
vendors, it is actually against United States law for us to set or fix prices
uniformly or arbitrarily. Therefore, each authorized re-seller of
TurboTax can charge what they want to charge, for any given TurboTax product,
based on their own supply of the software we have sold or licensed to
them, as well as their own customer demand.
We do absolutely
guarantee that the underlying TurboTax software code is the same for
any given version of the program (Deluxe, Business, etc.), no matter
from which licensed vendor you buy it, just as if you purchased the
software from us directly.
That said, and speaking from the point
of view as a price-conscious consumer, as long as you feel comfortable
buying TurboTax software from a specific merchant, and you can be
assured that the product is genuine (not fake or copied), then probably
the smartest choice for you to make as an individual is to buy the particular TurboTax software version
that you want, at the lowest price you can pay for it.
Thank you for asking about this.
