July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Intuit just released what may be the easiest way possible to do your taxes — an iPhone and Android application called SnapTax.

With SnapTax, you don’t have to fill out a bunch of complicated forms. Instead, you just use your smartphone camera to scan your W-2 form from your employer, answer a few more questions, then file your taxes from your phone. You don’t have to pay for any expensive software, either. Instead, the app is free to download, then if everything works out properly, you pay $14.99 when you’re actually file your taxes.

You can watch Intuit’s demo video below, though it doesn’t show real footage of the app in-action. Intuit demonstrated an earlier version for me a few months ago, and I an attest that the scanning part, at least, works as smoothly as promised.

Now, as you can probably guess from the description, the app is meant for people whose tax situation is pretty simple.Specifically, Intuit says it’s for people who make $80,000 or less a year; only have income from W-2s, interest, and unemployment; and don’t owe any property. I suspect that excludes a lot of VentureBeat readers. But, like the company’s acquisition of Mint, this seems like a way for the finance software giant to try to reach a young, tech-savvy audience.

Intuit also released the SnapTax application last year, but it was only on iPhones, and only worked for California residents. This year it’s available on Android too, and can be used to file taxes anywhere in the United States.