INTU

Our consumer tax business also faces significant, increasing competition from the public sector, where we face the risk of federal and state taxing authorities implementing revenue-raising strategies that involve developing and providing government tax software or other government return preparation systems at public expense. These or similar programs have been and may continue to be introduced or expanded in the future, which may change the voluntary compliance tax system in ways that could cause us to lose customers and revenue. For example, although the IRS free direct filing system was suspended, proponents of these programs continue to advocate for them. Additionally, the legacy IRS Free File Program enables the IRS to offer free commercial tax software directly to qualifying taxpayers, and taxpayer adoption of this program could expand with increased awareness of and government support for the program.

Our customers rely on the accuracy of our offerings. All of our tax products and many of our non-tax products have rigid development timetables that increase the risk of errors in our products and the risk of launch delays. Our tax preparation software product development cycle is particularly challenging due to the need to incorporate unpredictable, ambiguous, and potentially late tax law and tax form changes each year and because our customers expect high levels of accuracy and a timely launch of these products to prepare and file their taxes by the tax filing deadline. Due to the complexity of our products and the condensed development cycles under which we operate, our products have in the past, and may contain in the future unexpected errors that could interfere with the operation of the software or result in incorrect calculations. The complexity of the tax laws on which our products are based may also make it difficult for us to consistently deliver offerings that contain the features, functionality and level of accuracy that our customers expect. When we encounter problems, we may be required to modify our code, work with state tax administrators to communicate with affected customers, assist customers with amendments, distribute patches to customers who have already purchased the product and recall or repackage existing product inventory in our distribution channels. If we encounter development challenges or discover errors in our products either late in our development cycle or after release, it may cause us to delay our product launch date or suspend product availability until such issues can be fixed. Any major defects, launch delays or product suspensions may lead to loss of customers and revenue, negative publicity, customer and employee dissatisfaction, reduced retailer shelf space and promotions, and increased operating expenses, such as inventory replacement costs, legal fees or other payments, including those resulting from our accuracy guarantee in our tax preparation products. For example, an error in our tax products could cause a compliance error for taxpayers, including the over or underpayment of their federal or state tax liability. While our accuracy guarantee commits us to reimburse penalties and interest paid by customers due solely to calculation errors in our tax preparation products, such errors may result in additional burdens on third parties that we may need to address or that may cause us to suspend the availability of our products until such errors are addressed. This could also affect our reputation, the willingness of customers to use our products, and our financial results. Further, as we develop our platform to connect people to experts, such as connecting TurboTax customers with tax experts through our TurboTax Live offering, Expert Assist and TurboTax Expert Full Service offerings, or connecting QuickBooks customers with bookkeepers through our QuickBooks Live offering, we face the risk that these experts may provide advice that is erroneous, ineffective or otherwise unsuitable. Any such deficiency in the advice given by these experts may cause harm to our customers, a loss of customer confidence in our offerings or harm to our reputation or financial results. Moreover, as we continue to incorporate emerging technologies, like AI, into our offerings, they may not function as designed or have unintended consequences, any of which could subject us to new or enhanced competitive harm, legal liability, regulatory scrutiny or reputational harm.

We provide access to capital to small and mid-market businesses, businesses and consumers, which exposes us to risk, and may cause us material financial or reputational harm.

We provide qualified small and mid-market businesses and consumers with access to capital from third-party lenders and then we purchase some or all of those loans from the lender. This activity exposes us to the risk of the borrowers’ inability to repay such loans. We have entered into credit arrangements with financial institutions as a source of funding to purchase some or all of the loans. Any termination or interruption in the financial institutions’ ability to lend to us could interrupt our ability to provide capital to these businesses. borrowers. Further, the credit decisioning, pricing, loss forecasting, scoring and other models used to evaluate loan applications may contain errors or may not adequately assess creditworthiness of the borrowers, or may be otherwise ineffective, resulting in incorrect approvals or denials of loans. It is also possible that loan applicants could provide false or incorrect information. Moreover, adverse macroeconomic conditions, such as inflation and rising interest rates, have impacted and may continue to impact these businesses, which are disproportionately adversely affected by economic downturns, both small and mid-market businesses and consumers, and may increase the likelihood that the borrowers are unable to repay their loans. These risks are exacerbated as we expand into new products and customer segments. If any of the foregoing events were to occur, our reputation, relationships with borrowers, collections of loans receivable and financial results could be harmed.