The application is a well designed, easy to use experience that overlays a variety of dark UX patterns that manipulate the customer into a false sense of understanding. There are multiple checkpoints where the user is asked if they want to up their level of service and add Max, yet there is zero transparency around cost until the very end of the process—forcing the user to make a decision of paying a higher cost than initially promised or starting all over.
Using Turbo Tax used to be the better option than going to a tax expert in person. It was convenient, transparent, and best of all easy to use and understand. It has since turned into an application that leverages its prior prowess to take advantage of customers.
If there was another option to do my taxes digitally, no matter how much harder it was, or how much worse the UI and UX was... I would gladly switch.
Please take a harder look at the level of transparency you actually offer v.s. the level of transparency you assume you provide because it feels like over the years it has been lost along the way.
As a minister, our taxes are a little complex. Turbo Tax makes it easy because I don't have to go looking too hard to check the right boxes for the program to calculate everything. I appreciate that a lot.