Show HN: Disrupting tax preparation in Canada
simpletax.caMy feedback would be that "free" makes me extremely suspicious. How do you make money? Selling my information?
I'm not saying you are, just that it makes it sound like some kind of scam.
I think you should charge a low flat fee. $15 perhaps. I wouldn't be surprised if you had more people using the service this way.
Thanks for the feedback cmer! And you're totally right—we want to be very careful about using the word free. We are really a "pay what you want" service.
We initially offered returns for a flat $10, but being new in this space, we found it was difficult to get attention and that many were still doing their taxes on paper because of the perception that they had to pay. We're hoping we can convince many of these paper filers to switch knowing that payment is optional, not mandatory.
Also, your site TOTALLY needs to be on SSL. With the green bar. Even the marketing site. You need to instill as much trust as you can.
Show me some fancy logos of why I should trust you. At the very top of the page.
Trust is your biggest problem at the moment in my opinion. Identity fraud is so widespread nowadays people are careful.
Great points. We've tried to build trust by showing that we're real people (e.g. here's what we look like!), but I agree we could do more. Great feedback.
The app is—of course—on SSL.
Don't assume people will go as far as trying your app to find out. Most people don't understand the difference anyways between the app and marketing site.
No, you're totally right. I've added our site seal to the footer which verifies our identity. I've also modified our privacy policy with a link to this verification as well.
As we get more coverage, we'll add more symbols of trust right at the top of the page.
We're just getting started, so thanks for your feedback!
To be honest, I don't see how "pay what you want" is any better than free. I'd A/B test this, but my gut feeling is that charging a flat fee will lead to much higher conversion.
I have zero intention of putting my tax information into the cloud with UFile, Simpletax or any other vendor. If I cannot keep my data locally, then I am not interested.
Thanks for the feedback Mankhool. We're also exploring a version that would just make use of HTML5's local storage. Is that something you would consider?