For years (decades?) I’ve been using Intuit’s TurboTax desktop program to do my taxes and have never had a problem. Buy the disc or purchase download from Amazon, install on my computer and do my taxes. No problem
This year it’s different. I purchased the download from Amazon, installed the program and started my taxes. Program will not start without providing Intuit login credentials, which I don’t have and never needed.
Further, Intuit will not allow me to create an account. Their technical support is clueless.
I already had an Intuit account, so it worked for me. I vaguely remember I had to create one several years ago in order to efile my state return. Sorry I can’t be of more help.
I always use their browser-based version and didn’t even realize they had a downloadable version. Sorry, also no help with that, other than suggesting the browser version.
I’ve spent the last couple of hours on the phone with Intuit and they don’t have a clue as to why I can’t create an account. I’ve done everything they’ve suggested such as clearing cache, accepting cookies, updated Javascript, and restarting the computer. I even turned off my firewall for a minute or so. Nothing works.
That sounds incredibly frustrating, and you’re ending up with generic suggestions from them that probably help 95% of the time, but not you. I can definitely see you wanting to try a different software, except of course you’ve paid for it.
This might sound silly, but are you able to navigate to their website on your phone and try to register an account from there?
I’ve used the desktop PC version for years. But I buy it direct from intuit, not from Amazon. And as folks said above, a few years ago I needed to create an Intuit account to buy it and to use it.
Is there anything unusual about your email address? Oddball characters, not a “.com” address, etc. Mine ends in “.US” and I still occasionally find websites that assume that can’t possibly be a valid email address. They’re wrong. “.US” was added to the worldwide addressing scheme in 1985. Yep, almost 40 years ago.
The other possibility is to go to the Intuit login page and click the “I forgot my password” and try going through that process using the email you’re trying to sign up with. More than once over the years I’ve had some vendor (not necessarily Intuit) migrate accounts to a new system, keep the emails / user IDs, but shitcan the passwords. Leaving you (well me really) with a half-created useless account on the new system. Which useless account blocks creating a new one. The “I forgot my password” usually fixes those.
I know you think you never signed up at Intuit before. But a) you might have and forgot, or b) you might have at some other company 15 years ago that Intuit later bought.
I’ve tried everything that I can think of now, including using different email addresses, my Android phone, Android tablet and my wife’s iPhone. It’s always the same result:
The feature you’ve requested is temporarily unavailable
Make sure your browser has Javascript and cookies enabled. If the problem persists you can clear your cache and cookies and then restart your computer, or try using a different browser.
Try again
For more help, please contact customer support and reference code 25625.
According to Intuit, reference code 25625 refers to Javascript, cookies, etc.
Note that I’m not going for an old account - I’m trying to create a brand new account with never-before-seen credentials.
I don’t recall for sure; I’m leaning towards “no”. I log in to their website to buy and to download the installer, and I generally do not leave myself logged into e-commerce sites; if there’s a log-out button, I use it.
I haven’t played with Turbotax 2023 yet.
At the risk of a stupid question, are you absolutely sure you’ve turned off all the ad-blockers in your browser(s)? And then cleared your caches?
I’m traveling this week and have had to deal with a dozen different and new e-commerce sites for new-to-me hotels, airlines, tour booking agencies, etc. It is remarkable how many of them will do 90% of a purchase successfully then go stupid at the very end over something blocked by my ad blocker. I’ve spent waay too much time on vacation troubleshooting browser issues.
I’m going home on Fri and should have a chance to fiddle with TT2023 on Sat morning. I’ll let you know what I find.
Another thing to try other than your phone is to install a completely different browser on your computer, don’t import any settings from your primary browser, and try going to Intuit from there. Not sure if you’ve tried that yet.
FWIW I switched from a decade+ of TurboTax to FreeTaxUSA a couple years ago and it has been fine. The first year I actually did my taxes first in TT (didn’t actually file), then in FTU, and got the same results, so I went with FTU for the filing and have stuck with it.
But first, you need to get into TT because … BECAUSE!!!
I’ve never used TurboTax, but I do use Quickbooks Online on a daily basis (I do bookkeeping part time). I get this message often, usually when I’m trying to connect to a client’s bank account or credit card account. The same thing will work just fine for another client. After a few days, or sometimes several, whatever I was trying to do mysteriously works.
I definitely agree with you that this is an Intuit problem. But I don’t think they even know what the issue is when this sort of thing pops up. I don’t think they know how their own software works half the time.
I just tried FreeTaxUSA and I’m happy with what I saw. I’ve been trying to avoid online tax programs because of reasons, but it seems there really are no other standalone programs out there.
I’ll keep trying to get into TurboTax (because I paid $45 and can’t get a refund from Amazon on this), but at least I now have an alternative that works well and is easy to use.
I see you’ve already given FreeTaxUSA a preliminary look, but to +1 this, I was rather skeptical at first, but now I’m a believer. I’ve used it for the past three years and will use it this year too.
Not required, but I always opt for their first paid tier (I forget what they call it) just to support them (this, in addition to electronic filing fees). Entirely optional.