TaxCycle bought by Xero

I sure hope that the sale of TaxCycle to Xero won’t change the amazing customer support & product development.
Other Xero purchases (Hubdoc), has resulted in horrendous customer service and a severe degradation of the product to the point of uselessness.

1 Like

Is there any official announcement about this move? This is a complete surprise to me.
Thank you all.

Oh shucks, we are not at all delighted. This may be a good Christmas present for Carmen and the other owners, but not for us. This is devastating news! I guess I shouldn’t speak for others but I am not ecstatic about this. Maybe I will have to start investigating Intuit’s tax program.

2 Likes

It’s on the Taxcycle website under news. Cameron remains President and operates “stand alone”. I’ll go back to my usual worries and see if I notice anything.

1 Like

After 30+ years with Dr Tax Software, I switched to Tax Cycle after purchase by Thompson Reuters. The buyer seemed to want to recover their payout by cutting on support and flooding us with over priced unneeded additions. Let’s hope that Tax Cycle included some protection from this in their negotiations…

2 Likes

To provide a little reassurance here, TaxCycle will continue to operate as a standalone brand under @Cameron’s leadership and the Calgary team is staying intact. For our customers, nothing changes today. TaxCycle plans to continue to provide the technical support for our product in the same way we do now.

4 Likes

Are we going to get free Xero account?

2 Likes

I switched to TC last year after being with Cantax for decades. This news of TC being sold is not sitting well despite leadership remaining. In majority of situations like this, the initial service and quality remain same, however that soon changes as the acquiring company’s financial and non-financial objectives change. The customer always ends up losing… I have experienced this with accounting software and now with tax software.

4 Likes

@Elizabeth
Its not today we’re concerned about; it’s next tax season :smiley: Obviously, we love what we have. Instead of complaining, we should congratulate @Cameron for his good fortune!

1 Like

My number one worry as well, but Taxcycle needed help with developing associated services, (ie taxfolder is still has a way to go to be useful/productive). I’m hopefully this will help.



From: taxcycle@discoursemail.com
Sent: December 23, 2021 11:46
To: gregory@gregorymarkocpa.com
Reply to: taxcycle+e721bdbedaea886f61c283359f5360d1@discoursemail.com
Subject: [protaxcommunity.com] TaxCycle bought by Xero

|

  • |

| shaun
December 23 |

  • | - |

I switched to TC last year after being with Cantax for decades. This news of TC being sold is not sitting well despite leadership remaining. In majority of situations like this, the initial service and quality remain same, however that soon changes as the acquiring company’s financial and non-financial objectives change. The customer always ends up losing… I have experienced this with accounting software and now with tax software.

2 Likes

Based on my personal experience, I absolutely love both, TC and Xero.

1 Like

I switched to CCH-iFirm last year from TC after using good 5 years. Don’t ask me why maybe a client portal
With this news, I’ll pay close attention to the upcoming years if TC keeps up the quality before I may decide

Congratulations to @Cameron and his team

Everyone –

Just to weigh in with my thoughts, appreciating that change often creates worry.

We know that it’s important to enhance TaxCycle with more cloud capabilities, and that is a HUGE undertaking for a company of 31 people, If you follow news about Cyberthreats, you’ll know that there is a constant stream of bad actors looking to disrupt businesses all over the world. It’s a ton of work to keep everything and everyone safe.

For myself, I wanted the backing of a respected global company as we take on this work, and Xero is the partner we chose.

I’m confident that we will keep all the best aspects of the TaxCycle product and service, while adding the security and scalability that Xero provides.

I thank all of your for your support as we move forward. I’m excited to carry on as CEO of TaxCycle and I look forward to all of your feedback and guidance in the New Year.

Happy Holidays and all the best in the New Year.

~ Cameron

6 Likes

Personally, not excited, although I’ve followed Cameron’s software since Day 1 with Henry Zimmer. Yet another “professional tax software only” company being purchased by a “we’re an everything to everyone” company…and this is NOT generally good news for tax practitioners. We’ll likely see prices rise (great, I’m still retiring and paying full prices now…what will the future bring that way?), and consumer-focused development take a back seat to profits. Kind of the old stories again. Sigh.

Yah - it’s good for Cameron and shareholders, but those of us who’ve hyped and supported development ideas on this product…well, not so much. Time will tell, but personally I think Xero will force TC into a cloud-only solution which I would reject instantly.

2 Likes

As others have put it, only time will tell. Like others, I am concerned that the cost for the software will become prohibitive/not cost effective for the number of clients that I use it for, whether it be due to the passing down by Xero of its cost to acquire TC, Xero trying to subsidize TaxFolder, or anything else that Xero can think of, and will force me to search for other alternative providers. I too am concerned about tech support. I do not use nor need Xero and am also concerned about cloud computing given the hackers have managed to infiltrate large organizations, e.g., CRA’s recent experience. Great news for Cameron does not necessarily mean great news for TC clients.

1 Like

Although I am on the verge of retiring, I still look forward to TaxCycle in the cloud. I haven’t quite recovered from that sinking feeling that hit me when I heard the news. I guess we just have to trust Cameron to keep our interests in mind as well.

Will pricing still be competitive

1 Like

Just think…on April 30 you’re happily working away on your AWS-hosted TC files when…AWS goes down (as it has been off and on for the past week). Won’t that be fun?

No thanks - can’t think of anything worse than being separated from my data. I use an Azure server, with a “warm” replacement server on Google Compute Platform that I can restore data to quite rapidly and continue working.

2 Likes

WOW… I sincerely hope they do not make it cost prohibitive for us small one person offices who DO NOT or CANNOT go into the cloud. Please realize everyone does not have great reliable internet and in cases like mine… finally got better quality but pay a small fortune for it. Do not trust cloud with all this info… too many hackers and in reality not a necessity.
Do not use Xero for obvious reasons.

Congrats to Cameron on build and sale… I get it… but as a user who has always promoted Taxcycle as the most amazing customer support … I wonder if I will still be making the same claims in two years

1 Like