Tax calc software Charges

Tax software

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May I share my concern regarding the ever increasing charges for using Tax Calc software. Last year I paid £770.20 and this year it has gone up to £1,490.40 for the same tasks and number of users. I am sick & tired of this Company's tactics and tricks to hike up the charges every year without any valid justification.     Could members please suggest alternatives?

 

 

Replies (18)

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By Tim Vane
26th Apr 2019 19:06

I suspect that all software will have similar increases so don’t sweat it.

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By GR
26th Apr 2019 19:54

Taxfiler

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By Finding Accounting
26th Apr 2019 21:36

Wave is a great software and it's free. Give it a go...

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ALISK
By atleastisoundknowledgable...
26th Apr 2019 21:50

I think my TaxCalc increase this year was only a few %. What licences do you have?

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By SXGuy
27th Apr 2019 09:21

I'm trying to work out exactly what has increased your costs.

I recently moved from iris to taxcalc and with all the like for like products I save ALOT.

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ALISK
By atleastisoundknowledgable...
27th Apr 2019 09:36

If you buy a new product, they sometimes renew all your other products so renewal date is the same for all. That’s not what has happened is it?

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Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
27th Apr 2019 16:03

I have been with TaxCalc a few years now and pay £1500 per year for full suite, plus cloud connect.

What is concerning me is that what should be general improvements to core products are now been billed as extra modules, with an individual charge.

E signing is a feature in all products that should be standard however its £2 per signature, which could add another £1000 per year to my costs, when there is loads of cheap or e signing things available I don't get where they get the cost from. Its should be a standard part of core product with no extra charge.

They have a company house module, which, for free brings in standard company data but you have to pay extra if you want directors standard info bringing in. Whats the point of that.

Products link Senta and Accountancy manager have all this in as part of the product for no charge so why is this incur an extra charge.

The way things are going the pricing will get up to the same level as Digita soon. They would probably win more customers by constantly improving the core product and keeping cost increases at inflation levels.

On their social media they look like they are launching an improved AML and PM module at accountex next week. If these are charged as extra modules I will not be happy as the current PM function is poor so by bringing it up to industry standard I cannot see why that will justify an extra fee.

Now that Xero are looking to build out there offering with there own practice suite offered free to partners, Accountants would be able to remove a huge overhead from their practices by getting on board with them. IRIS, Digita and TaxCalc maybe should consider how they price as they could be about to lose the golden goose that keeps paying them.

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Replying to Glennzy:
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By johnhemming
27th Apr 2019 17:11

Its an thing about the nature of the tech business. There is potentially a really substantial cost in terms of writing software, but the marginal cost of additional copies is almost zero. Support, sales and marketing costs vary.

Hence any tech services business is going to be strongly driven by the competitive market. Sometimes things will be particularly profitable particularly if a lot of people pay an amount (which does not have to be that great) for something has a small sales or marketing cost and potentially a negligible support cost.

That is why there is a substantial merit in buying up the competition. The cost of entry is getting higher and higher simply because the amount of work required to produce usable software is greater and greater.

MTD is actually quite disruptive as it gives opportunities to a number of minnows to try swimming along with the sharks and whales of the business.

It remains, however, that over time the cost of entry will still grow. My own view is that the market will continue moving toward SaaS aka Cloud Services simply because that is a much easier support and maintenance model. It also has the merit of being primarily revenue orientated which means you can provide long term support without requiring lumpy licence fees. It is, however, harder to write responsive cloud software.

A digital signature for the purposes of litigation can be achieved simply by typing a name into pleadings without even using a scan. A scan is more usable as evidence of a contractual agreement. A proper digital signature using Asymmetric cryptography and a message digest takes a little bit of processing, but is not in itself something that is costly.

Hence what you are looking at is an overall revenue stream rather than necessarily separately identified revenue streams each of which is profitable.

It is sensible marketing for example for Xero to encourage agents to put their client base on their systems by offering additional facilities.

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Replying to Glennzy:
By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
29th Apr 2019 09:58

@Glenn Taxcalc direction of travel is quite clear when they launched the clunky "hub" about 5-6 years ago.

Gone was a "best of breed" tax filing software for the small practice, and they entered the market of "mid market" software for multi-partner firms looking to sell more and more add ons all the time.

As every year goes past, it gets more and more clunky with more bolt ons, and above inflation increase, and expensive 'extras'. How the flip "trusts" are extra for example I really don't know.

The PM stuff is a bit poor and we don't use ut.

I use both taxfiler and taxcalc, having pulled back from going 100% to taxfiler when it was bought out by IRIS as I figured I would be moving again inside of 3 years and we are sat straddled between the two for another 12 months until I spot a better option.

Dear Competitors: The market is open, please come in and do what TaxCalc did 15 years ago.

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Replying to ireallyshouldknowthisbut:
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By johnhemming
29th Apr 2019 11:33

I am in an unusual position in that I could retire, but have instead decided to write inter alia MTD software (and that, of course, includes tax software). Hence perhaps I can be a bit more frank than my competitors.

The difficulty with these sorts of things is the amount of work that is needed to go from essentially a blank piece of paper through to a revenue stream. I have no problems because my operation is profitable without any revenue from MTD hence I can develop a market offering without being under cash flow pressure. However, for most new entrants to the market it is a real challenge as they have to invest substantial sums in writing code without any guaranteed revenue.

I think this will only get more difficult as the number of interfaces that are required goes up hence the threshold to having a functional offering gets higher.

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By bernard michael
28th Apr 2019 10:23

Have you ever worked out the cost per client?
I think you'll find it's miniscule and can easily be recovered by small increases in client fees if you think it necessary
I still think Tax Calc is excellent ( a happy user not working for TC)

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By JD
28th Apr 2019 21:08

Flirted with Tax Calc but in the absence of certainty over price and in particular the bits needed for MTD decided not to go ahead. I have seen too many get caught heavily by sage in a similar fashion. With that said I would not move to anything new no matter how well recommend unless I knew the cost for at least the next 3-5 year period - it's expensive to migrate data, for you and the team to get to know and get the best out of a new system only to find the price goes up on that as well.

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Replying to JD:
By Tim Vane
28th Apr 2019 21:21

I suspect that most, if not all, software suppliers would happily sign you to a 3 year deal with a guaranteed price. At least, that’s my experience.

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By Mitch
29th Apr 2019 10:42

Our TaxCalc fee increase this year was 4.3%. Don't understand why you would have such a large hike!

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Red Leader
By Red Leader
29th Apr 2019 13:16

I agree with other posters. My Taxcalc increase this year was a single figure %. OP needs to dig down into the figures.

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By marks
29th Apr 2019 23:19

Our taxcalc fee actually fell this year. Mainly due to fact we have 2 less users than last year. We also took out the module that enables fast importing of new clients from companies house.

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