Tax preparation software was always a favorite topic of Computer Chronicles. This next episode from March 1988 included some returning guests and updates to several products featured in prior shows. As I discussed in an episode of the Chronicles Revisited Podcast, this was a period when a number of small developers competed in the tax preparation software market. We would not start to see the industry consolidation towards TurboTax under Intuit for another 5 or 6 years.

While annual-release franchises are now a common feature of computer games–think Madden or Call of Duty–the practice arguably originated with tax preparation software. After all, tax laws (and tax forms) in the United States change every year, so the software must be constantly updated. This fact made tax preparation a lucrative field for small software companies to enter during the 1980s, when the personal computer market was still struggling to find a foothold in the home.