Well, I would take any info from Intuit with a grain of, wait, make that a ton, of salt. First, the major issues affecting the consumer backlash were related to the desktop version; which shows a sales decrease. I suspect that it may not include all the units sold that were returned by customers. As such, the actual net sales may be far less than the -6% reported.

Second, the dramatic -11% in the free file alliance does show that taxpayers, even those who can get free software via the alliance, were abandoning Intuit.

Third, the on-line sales figures that show +9% are, I believe, misleading. Intuit introduced free mobile e-filing for very basic returns. Snap a picture of your W-2 and away you go. None of these taxpayers were affected by the backlash issues, and Intuit generated little profit from them. So, while more folks may have used their very basic on-line filing, I doubt that this was a money maker for them; espeically when, during this fiasco, they started giving free basic filing (which may also be why the alliance figures dropped and their on-line "sales" figures increased. That +9% figure does not translate to additional 9% profits, just younger filers who have had little to no experience with tax software and have very simple returns.

I believe that Intuit lost money and customers, and that these "unit sales" figures don't even come close to telling the whole story of how this fiasco affected them.