Intuit's TurboTax Lost 1 Million Free Users This Tax Season.

Intuit Inc., the maker of TurboTax and other finance software, reported higher-than-expected revenue for the fiscal third quarter, driven by increased usage of higher-priced features. However, investors were disappointed with the performance of Intuit's other products, causing the company's shares to decline. Sales from the QuickBooks unit, which targets small businesses and self-employed users, were in line with estimates. Intuit has been investing in live-assistance and artificial intelligence tools to make TurboTax more appealing to users with complex tax situations, resulting in a 10% increase in average user spending. While the number of free TurboTax users decreased by 1 million compared to the previous year, some users may have opted for a limited IRS-run pilot for free tax software. Intuit expects revenue for the current quarter to be higher than analyst estimates, but profit to be slightly lower. The company also announced that the CEO of Credit Karma, a service acquired by Intuit, will be departing at the end of the year. [Extracted from the article]