Press Room: 2004
Tax Web Sites Withstand April 15 Deadline in Relatively Good Shape, Reports Keynote
- Overall, Tax Sites Deliver Good Performance Despite Increase in Americans Filing Taxes Online
- Leading Tax Sites Measured by Keynote for Speed and Reliability From 25 U.S. Cities From Monday Through Midnight April 15th
- IRS.gov Fastest Overall, TurboTax Most Reliable During Time Period Measured; Ernst & Young and 1040.com Laggards in Speed and Reliability When Compared to Rest of Pack Measured
- Majority of Sites Measured Still Slower Than Keynote Business 40
SAN MATEO, Calif., — April 16, 2004 — Online tax sites faced a taxing challenge all their own this week and survived an unprecedented flood of e-filers by delivering good overall performance in the final four business days leading up to the April 15 filing deadline, according to the results of a study released today by Keynote Systems (Nasdaq: KEYN), The Internet Performance Authority®.
Keynote measured the speed and reliability for accessing the home page or “tax center” section of leading tax information and preparation Web sites from the end user perspective in 25 U.S. cities beginning on April 12. Tax sites measured by Keynote included: 1040.com, Amazon.com’s tax center, Ernst & Young (ey.com), H&R Block (hrblock.com), IRS.gov, Jackson Hewitt (jacksonhewitt.com). NOLO.com, Quicken.com, Taxact.com, Taxcut.com and Turbotax.com.
Despite reports from the IRS indicating a 12 percent leap in the number of returns filed online between April 4, 2003 and April 2, 2004, resulting in more than 48.55 million e-filing receipts, the majority of the tax sites that Keynote measured for speed and reliability performed admirably.
Overall, beginning on Monday, April 12, the tax sites measured by Keynote delivered consistently high levels of performance for home page download as well as success rate. With the exceptions of Jackson Hewitt and 1040.com, all the sites achieved average success rates of 97% or higher. In speed, excluding Ernst & Young’s Web site, all sites delivered their home page in an average of five seconds or less. However, the majority of the sites measured were still slower than the Keynote Business 40 Index, which measures the performance of 40 of the best, most well connected Web sites around the clock. The index average in download speed for the Keynote Business 40 the week of April 5 was 1.78 seconds.
Beginning 24 hours before the April 15 deadline, 1040.com displayed the most inconsistent performance with download times as high as 12 seconds. In the last four hours of the reported period, the 1040.com site dipped in success rate down to well below 70% availability – possibly due to a rush of last minute users requiring tax filing information. In contrast, during this same time period, the Turbotax and Quicken Web sites were able to maintain a very admirable 100% availability. This is an achievement that was no doubt greatly appreciated by the users of these two Web sites in the final hours leading up to the April 15 midnight tax-filing deadline.
“It appears that even though more people than ever are filing their taxes online, the leading tax preparation Web sites have done a very good job preparing themselves for many more visitors than years past,” said Roopak Patel, senior Internet analyst in Keynote’s public services division. “When driving people to your online tax service it’s imperative to assure the proper level of planning and monitoring in order to deliver the best performance possible for customers.”
The complete results of The Keynote Tax Web Site Study follow:
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Source: Keynote Systems, Inc.
The biggest increase this year
in online tax filing comes not from tax professionals, but from
those individuals who prepare their own return. According to
IRS.gov, 21 percent more self-prepared returns were filed in 2004,
compared to 2003, while tax professionals measured an 11 percent
increase.
E-filing has become particularly popular with 18 to 34 year olds with broadband internet connections, according to a March 2004 survey conducted for SBC Communications by I/H/R Research Group. The survey found that 73 percent of this age group that do prepare their own taxes end up filing online – outnumbering paper filers more than 3-to-1. The survey found that 57 percent of e-filers do so as soon as they can, compared to just six percent who wait until the last minute to file.
About Keynote
Founded in 1995, Keynote
Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, is the
worldwide leader in Web performance measurement and management
services that improve the quality of e-business. Keynote’s services
enable corporate enterprises to monitor, benchmark, test, diagnose
and optimize their e-business systems both inside and outside the
firewall. Approximately 2,200 corporate IT departments and 18,000
individual subscribers rely on the company's easy-to-use and
cost-effective services to increase revenues and reduce downtime
costs, without requiring additional complex and costly software
implementations.
The Keynote brand is recognized as The Internet Performance Authority because of the large number of Internet performance measurements its global infrastructure of over 1,600 measurement computers in 50 cities worldwide captures and stores on a daily basis (over 40 million at last count); frequent citations in the mass media regarding Web site and Internet performance; and its broad and growing range of market-leading Internet performance indices for various vertical markets. (http://www.keynote.com/solutions/overview.html)
Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be reached at http://www.keynote.com/ or by phone in the U.S. at 650-403-2400.
Keynote, The Internet Performance Authority and Perspective are
registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. Other trademarks are
the property of their respective owners. © 2004 Keynote Systems,
Inc.
Public Relations
Contact:
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote
Systems, Inc., (650) 403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com
