The new physical locations build on the company's recent efforts to develop more of a physical footprint for its customers, according to Mark Notarainni, general manager of Intuit's Consumer Group. In an interview last night he said that TurboTax Live launched in 2020 as a purely virtual experience. From there, the first in-person TurboTax Expert Offices opened in late 2023; then, over 2024, Intuit opened many more such offices across the country, bringing its current total to 400 locations.
The TurboTax stores and TurboTax Expert Offices are two different things. The 20 TurboTax stores generally will be open to the public and will primarily be for walk-ins (although people will also be able to make appointments); the 600 TurboTax Expert Offices primarily will be for appointments (though people will still be able to walk in for help (though people will still be able to walk in.)
"The difference is for the retail, the 20, if I'm walking down the street around here, and I see there's a TurboTax store, I can just walk in and then we will engage with you and get you started on your taxes. For our offices, you'll [Google us] and you can schedule a time or call right away. But it's not designed for drop-ins. We will do it, but that's not what it's designed for," he said.
20 TurboTax stores
Asked for an analogy, Notarainni said the new retail locations are not meant to be tax prep centers like H&R Block, nor are they meant to be something akin to a local CPA firm. He felt the best comparison would instead be the Apple store, where people would go for guided service and support. He noted that when Apple first launched its stores, people felt it was counterintuitive given Apple's identity as a tech company. But he said that, through careful scaling in the right markets ("they didn't have 6,000 storefronts to worry about"), they became very successful. Intuit will be taking a similar approach.
"Think about that in terms of tax and personal finance. We don't have 10,000 stores, and we're leading with technology. The platform capabilities that we have in TurboTax and Credit Karma allow us to serve customers in a very unique and different way, just like Apple was when you went into a retail store. It was not like a normal retail store, so that's the analog," he said.
Walk-ins will be greeted by concierges as soon as they enter, who act more as customer service and support staff, helping people set up their TurboTax account or log into their current account. From there, the customer will meet with an Intuit tax pro who will be a licensed accounting professional (either a CPA or an EA), and they'll discuss the tax situation at hand, either right there in the storefront or in a private room for more discretion. The tax pros are employed directly by Intuit, drawn from its pool of roughly 13,000 professionals.
Notarainni stressed that the digital and in-person experiences are 100% integrated. Someone could start their taxes online and only go to the store if they have a problem, or they could start at the store and finish online at home.
"What's beautiful about the experience is that mostly everyone comes in with a mobile device, and downloading our app gets you access to the storefront as well and then keeps you connected with your tax return. … We can get you started. You can download your information, you can connect to your account, you can get as far as you could possibly get, and then you have the app on your phone, and you go about your day. And then we now stay in contact between that pro in the store and the customer," he said.
Locations will be owned and operated by Intuit, instead of being franchised. They're intended to be permanent, not seasonal. And the prices will be largely the same.
"We will have pricing that's very similar across the board, generally, based on your tax situation," he said.
While right now the retail locations focus solely on tax, he said Intuit intends to eventually expand into other service offerings.
"It's designed for service first, and our initial deployment is all about taxes. But you can see we have so many more capabilities with credit card and advisory services and our small businesses that have specific questions and needs, we will be expanding into those services as well," he said.
600 TurboTax Expert offices
The TurboTax Expert offices are intended to be more local, as opposed to the retail stores that are concentrated in major metro areas, which is why Intuit has already established 400 such offices and plans to open 200 more. Unlike the retail locations, people will generally call and make an appointment with the tax expert in their area to discuss a specific problem they are having with their taxes that needs some professional guidance.
The establishment of the 600 expert offices is meant to provide local experiences for customers no matter where they are. Notarainni said Intuit's research found that people are five times more likely to engage with Intuit experts when they are within a 50-mile radius. This informed Intuit's strategy for where to place these offices. Ideally, Intuit wants any given customer to be no more than 50 miles from an expert office. This is in contrast to how it chose to place the 20 retail locations: for these, the company tried to get the biggest coverage for its major markets, which is why they'll be located in large metro areas.
In both cases, though, Notarainni said Intuit put a great deal of thought into where it would site its in-person locations.
"It was a lot of math, a lot of analytics, a lot of mapping, and a lot of sweat equity, especially on the storefronts, because it's a lot to build," he said,
Customers drove demand
Notarainni said the decision to open retail locations and expand Intuit's expert offices was driven by customer demand. While most businesses are going in the opposite direction, from physical locations to purely online, Intuit found there was still a significant group of taxpayers who craved an in-person experience.
"Now we're going to meet them where they are. Local presence matters to people as they're filing their taxes because you need to know state laws, county laws, everything associated with that locality, so there's a high customer demand. That's what really was driving it for us," he said.
The locations are not envisioned as direct revenue generators that will produce an entirely new income stream for the company. However, he said Intuit believes the retail stores and expert offices will indirectly drive revenue through a "halo effect," effectively generating more TurboTax customers and helping retain the current ones through better support and service.
He conceded that the physical locations represent a new mode of thinking for Intuit, which historically has emphasized the online experience, but said the team has learned quickly and is already seeing results.
"It's very hard because it's very different, but [we] love it," said Notarainni. "The team that's actually been building this out has thrived because they're learning a whole bunch of new things, and we're seeing the results [from] running experiments and pilots and all the way up through October peak. And they just keep seeing and iterating and learning. It's definitely intense, because the tax season doesn't move, so we have a very, very strict deadline, but it's been an environment that is super dynamic, super fast paced, and it's an infusion of people that have been at TurboTax for a long time, and new folks, and that's a cool environment to be in."
