INTU, Intuit

This company makes software, particularly the kind that is used to calculate and file your taxes electronically. Things should be going well at this time of the year and they are. The company just reported a 62% increase in profits and the stock briefly peaked at $62.33. For Fibo enthousiastes this is a good reason to be alert. Here are the charts;

intu mar 2012 bintu mar 2012 s

Perhaps the count is wrong, perhaps not. The p/e is above 25 pretty lofty by any standards. 49.5% of Americans do not pay any income taxes at all. In Canada that figure may not be all that much different but people need to file anyway. Students etc. to accumulate RRSP room and get a GST rebate for rentals . Older people for GST, OAS supplements, real estate tax rebates and so on. But you can get the same package for a single payment of $20,see http://www.genutax.ca , and get an updated version each year for nothing. Also, maybe some day the CRA/IRS  themselves will wake up and decide that it should provide these services at no cost considering the huge benefits these agencies reap from not having to “input” the data. This is a sell.

HRB, H & R Block, a do-not-do-it-yourself outfit, that also helps with tax filings and a few additional services, is still trading at about 1/3 of its peak value years ago. It has a p/e of about 13