Intuit Screws Their Customers Again

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UPDATE: See the comment and link from Intuit below. It was very nice of them to respond.

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I received an email from the Quickbooks team last week under the title “Critical Notice – IRS Change to 1099 Form.” It starts out well enough, explaining to me that the IRS had made a change to their forms:

Urgent Service Notice
Dear Elia Freedman,

The IRS has changed the 1099-MISC form for Tax Season 2013. As a result, if you print 1099s from your current version of QuickBooks, the new forms will not be correctly aligned. To solve this issue, two options are available:

Two? Okay. I figured they were going to make sure I updated my 2013 version of Quickbooks so it could be used to pay taxes for the 2013 year. Hmmm. This isn’t going to go well.

OPTION 1: Complete the 1099-MISC forms by hand and submit them to the IRS. The IRS will accept handwritten forms. Please see http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1099gi.pdf, section G for IRS guidelines and details.

Oh, boy. This definitely isn’t going the way I expected, or the way that every other company on the planet would handle this. I should have expected this as Intuit is, well, Intuit. If that’s option 1, what could option 2 be?

OPTION 2: Upgrade to QuickBooks Pro 2014. Upgrading will save you time by allowing you to print the new 1099 forms directly from QuickBooks with no alignment issues. We realize upgrading might require some extra effort. To make things a little easier, we’re offering 20% off QuickBooks Pro 2014 plus free shipping through January 3, 2014.

You are f’ing kidding me? This is what you offer me? Pay to fix a bug in your software? It’s not like I’m using even a two year old product here. I am literally using the version of Quickbooks for the year I wish to pay taxes. Sure, they’ve come out with a new version in the last couple of months, like they do every year that has no changes in it, except, apparently, it now conforms to IRS Form 1099.

I have rarely met a company I hate as much as Intuit. [1] They once told me, 15 years ago, when I was polite enough to call to report a bug, that there were no bugs in Quickbooks. The balls these guys have.

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[1] They have some awesome people working for them, though, which makes this even sadder to me.

9 thoughts on “Intuit Screws Their Customers Again”

  2. Got the same message. I pulled out last year’s 1099 forms and held it up to the new forms I bought today. Everything is the same size and position (ignoring the slight change of adding a “2nd TIN not.” box). The only difference (for printing from QuickBooks) is the position of the Payers FID and Recipients ID #. The IRS now wants it slightly below (about 1 line spacing lower) it’s former position and on the new form the previously printed area is marked in red (indicating “do not print here”). So… Why? Why change the form in such a slight manner? And WHY can’t Intuit do what any NORMAL company would which is send out a patch to make that incredibly tiny change!!?!!!

  3. We’re so sorry for the confusion on this. The printing of IRS Form 1099 and 1096 is supported in QuickBooks desktop versions of 2011 and newer. The notice about incorrect alignment when printing these forms only pertains to users of QuickBooks desktop 2010 and older. More information about forms compatibility is available here: http://payroll.intuit.com/support/kb/2001631.html?rSearchTerm=1099+printing. I hope this helps! Mindy for Intuit

    • Ahem….well, guess who has QB 2010?!!! So…hmmm…I don’t have to upgrade to 2014. I could choose a cheaper route of just upgrading to 2011 or 2012 or 2013 and then do the software update. Since I have to buy multiple licenses I may want to do the cheaper route.

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