February 16, 2000 - Mike Block and biz.comp.accounting were mainly responsible for getting Intuit to drop a $40 million tax table price increase. According to Brian Livingston of Cnet and InfoWorld:
Rich Walker, head of the QuickBooks Professional Advisor program, announced today that QB will only charge $6/month for each copy of QB. It will not charge for each company that processes payroll with one copy of QB, even if it is a five user copy. The announcement timing may relate to February 15, the date when QB6 and 99 tables expire. It also may relate to this recent message from Mike Block to Intuit:
"I do not think Intuit realizes how close it is to class action suits, organized calls for FTC and Justice Department intervention, organized boycotts, major magazine articles, action by CPA groups, state constitutional amendment petitions and legislative action."
"It also may relate to Accounting Today and CNET stories about the table controversy, me and biz.comp.accounting. You also should know about the two QuickBooks-using lawyers I hired to sue Intuit and the many of us who contacted friends, legislators, reporters or CPA groups. I also drafted a Florida constitutional amendment petition to stop the sale of programs with features that expire (I have lots of experience drafting and leading successful petition efforts)."
This change should save QuickBooks accounting professionals more than $20 million a year. One CPA said he did payroll for 500 companies. However, if 28,000 QuickBooks ProAdvisors average 21 payroll companies, buying one $72 per year table (not 21 tables) should save them $20 million.