2017 Tax ReportAdobe Digital Insights | Under embargo until April 12, 2017 @ 9AM ET

Table of Contents

1. Online tax visits have stagnated2. Online tax completions have dropped despite support from smartphones3. Consumers drop phones for desktops as they approach filing deadline4. Americans are not wasting time in submitting their tax refunds5. What happens when the US gets stressed about taxes?6. Consumers slammed with heavy tax process7. Taxes still weighed down by paper process8. Junk food beats out alcohol for America’s favorite vice during tax prep9. It doesn’t get much worse than filing taxes10. If there could ever be “winners” at taxes, these states would qualify11. Refunds: Vacation? Shopping? …Paying the bills?

Online tax visits have stagnated

Overall visits to tax sites stopped growing in 2016 and shows no signs of improvement this year• Unless the late season traffic spikes, tax filing sites are poised to see the same stagnation in visits this year

Are difficult tax filings turning people away from the web?• Tax filing sites are reporting more early season traffic (+ 2 points YoY) but appear to be losing late filers to

offline / tax professionals• Nearly half (47%) of filers plan on using the services of a tax professional this year

Online tax completions have dropped despite support from smartphones

Online tax filing completions have dropped since 2014

Brave souls who attempt to file their taxes on smartphones are actually seeing increases in completion rates, but the user base is so small that it has little effect on the overall averages

Hope for the future

26% of people claim that cross device tax preparation has made their online filing easier over the past years

As the world turns mobile, document management across devices becomes necessary. Since last February, consumers have signed 2.3x more documents via their mobile Fill & Sign app (Source: Adobe Document Cloud)

Consumers drop phones for desktops as they approach filing deadline

By April of each season, smartphone share of traffic drops to about half of its early season levels

Consumers use phones to navigate to tax filing sites in anticipation of the season, but ultimately end up switching to a desktop to finish their filings

While there is a small shift in filing taxes on smartphones, 87% of all filings still come in through desktops

Americans are not wasting time in submitting their tax refunds

Early filers try to get their refund earlier each year• 2014: Feb 3rd

• 2015: Feb 2nd

• 2016: Feb 1st

• 2017: Jan 31st is the earliest to date

Who’s procrastinating? Millennials of course• Twice as many millennials are

reportedly leaving their tax filings untilthe last 24 hours this year (6.6% 2016,12.4% 2017)

What happens when the US gets stressed about taxes?

On-Season vs. Off-Season: The tax filing website explosion

27xmore pages viewed each

month

30%higher # of visits per month

10xmore monthly visitors

58%more traffic coming from

external links

68.3BTotal PDFs viewed in Adobe

Reader products

Sources: Adobe Analytics & Adobe Reader

Consumers slammed with heavy tax process

Where did I put that W2…

• Average consumers estimated that they would spend 6 hours and need to gather 9 forms this year to complete their tax filing

• Nearly half of Americans (46.2%) agree that tax documents are by far the least desirable documents to work with

Consumers slammed with heavy tax process

Paper pushing in 2017

• Filers report that their biggestheadaches are:

1. Finding paperdocuments (20%)

2. Printing a document inorder to sign it (18%)

3. Keeping track of thedocuments needed(15%)

Taxes still weighed down by paper process

Tax documents still need filing cabinets

Nearly 70% of tax documents are still handled in paper form

E-signing: Gateway to a better life

61% of consumers say that over the last couple years the ability to sign their online tax filing electronically has made taxes easier to do

Consumers demand an electronic experience

Looking forward 42% of consumers says that an entirely electronic experience would make online tax filing easier

Junk food beats out alcohol as America’s favorite vice during tax prep

During stressful times, here’s how fellow Americans are coping:

1. Candy always helps• Eating junk food (17%), (18-24 are

heavy on the junk food 31%)

2. Drink your worries away• Driving Adult beverages: Had an

alcoholic drink or two (12%)

3. Risk the audit?• Fantasy rebellion: Fantasized about

not filing and see what happens (9%)

Consumers report the only thing worse than filing taxes as:

1. Argue with significant other (23%)2. Get a filling at the dentist (21%)3. Change a tire in the rain (19%)4. File taxes (11%)

It doesn’t get much worse than filing taxes

If there could ever be “winners” at taxes, these states would qualify

Procrastination Nation (Tax Day 2016)

Winner: First to vote, first to file

- Iowa: 2.5% of all online tax returns were filed on Tax Day

Loser: Home of the IRS, last to file

- Washington DC: 5.9% of all online tax returns were filed on Tax Day

Most growth in online usage (2016 Tax Season)

Winner: Alabama: +14% (YoY) visits per month

Loser: Virginia: -1% (YoY) visits per month

Source: Adobe Analytics

Refunds: Vacation? Shopping? …Paying the bills?

Taxes are hard, but Americans are struggling to find enjoyment in their refunds

Kill the bills• “Should I be happy that my tax refund is

coming or should I be upset that everything is going towards bills?”

• “Trying to figure out how to spend my tax refund and it's all going to bills #adulting “

Back to school• “I used my entire tax refund to pay for school

and books. I hate y'all”• “Good news is: I got a huge tax refund. Bad

news is: it's all spent already- on my MBA tuition and student loans. “

Methodology

Based on aggregated and anonymized consumer data comprised of 11.5 billion website visits between January 2014 and February 2017• Based on aggregated and anonymous data from visits to tax and financial websites within the United States and the

Adobe Document Cloud during Tax Season (January - April).

• Includes usage data from Adobe Reader desktop and mobile apps and Adobe Fill & Sign mobile apps betweenJanuary 2016 and February 2017.

• Includes consumer information from the 2017 ADI US Finance Survey, conducted between March 13th – 17th, 2017 to1,000 US consumers about their online financial and tax planning.

• Report based on 1+ million social mentions from January 1 – March 31, 2017 via Blogs, Facebook, G+, Reddit, Twitter,Dailymotion, Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr, VK, Disqus, Foursquare, Metacafe, Wordpress, and YouTube. Socialengagements are publicly available based on an aggregate total.

Data from different Adobe Experience Cloud solutions:

Document Cloud

Analytics Cloud

Marketing Cloud

Adobe Analytics

Adobe Social

Glossary

• Tax Season: January - April• Early Season: January and February• Late Season: March and April• Share of Visits: Percentage of visits that originated from specified devices• YOY: Year-over-year data comparison• Relative Growth: Growth based on a comparison to a base period (i.e. 2016 compared

to 2014)• External Links: HTML redirects from pages that are not search engines, display ads, or

social media• Tax Start: Online tax filing process started• Tax Submission: Online tax filing process completed• Tax Completion Rate: Total online tax filing starts divided by total online tax filing

submissions• PDF viewing stats: Calculated from the following sources: Desktop Reader 11, Desktop

Reader DC, and Acrobat Reader Mobile App