It's that dreaded time of year again in the US tax time. Taxpayers have until April 15th to file their returns for the 1997 tax year. However, this tax season has arrived with more than 800 changes in the tax law, and so brings with it a greater need for taxpayers to have help in organising their finances.

The traditional way to file a tax return here has been to fill out paper forms which are then mailed to the Internal Revenue Service of the federal government. However, filing returns electronically has been growing steadily since 1985 when the IRS first accepted electronic forms.

This increase is due in large part to more sophisticated software packages aimed at taxpayers.

America's best selling personal tax preparation software applications are Turbo Tax and MacInTax which are developed and sold by Intuit Inc. These programs help consumers prepare, file and plan their taxes electronically.

"We listened to what our customers wanted out of their tax software and gave it to them," said Mr Scott Cook, founder and chairman of Intuit. "The result is software that sets new standards for personalised tax preparation, Web connectivity and truly seamless electronic filing."

Intuit made electronic filing available to its customers in 1988 and of the 2.5 million people who bought TurboTax in 1997, 12 per cent of them filed electronically. This figure is helped by the fact that TurboTax can integrate with Quicken for managing personal finances and QuickBooks, the small business accounting program, so home users and businesses can access their accounts on their personal computers and cut and paste the information into the tax software. Once completed, they can then connect by telephone line to Intuit which files the tax information with the IRS.

"As far as tax preparation is concerned we have a hold on the market," said Mr Robert Blodgett of Intuit. The company has more than 200 tax software developers alone.

However, it wasn't in the tax market that the company first started out. It began by creating desktop applications to help people manage their finances from home and was one of the first entrants into the now increasingly popular personal financial management software market.

Quicken, the company's first product introduced in 1984, struck a chord with consumers and has since become synonymous with personal finance. This led to the creation of QuickBooks in 1992 and through the acquisition of ChipSoft in 1993, the TurboTax personal tax program. To support these products, Intuit created a financial supplies business selling paper cheques, forms and envelopes to millions of software customers.

In 1995, the company added online banking and bill payment to Quicken. The newest version of Quicken, Quicken 98, which was released last October, directly links to Intuit's Website, Quicken.com, where consumers and businesses can shop for insurance and mortgages as well as for information on investing, planning and taxes.

Quicken 98 has about 80 per cent of the retail market, according to an independent research firm, PC Data. The Quicken 98 family includes Quicken Basic 98, Quicken Deluxe 98, Quicken Home & Business 98 and Quicken Suite 98. All are shrink-wrapped software packages which are sold as floppy disks or CD Roms at retail outlets like CompUSA, Best Buy, Egghead, Office Depot, Babbages and Price Costco.

The retail channel is definitely Quicken's strongest channel, but it has turned out to be a two-company battle between it and Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft was later into the game but is gaining ground with its Money software on CD Rom which has the remaining 20 per cent of the retail market. "This will be the channel we'll trail in until we can nose ahead," said Mr Rich Bray, general manager of Money from his base at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

And Money is seeing growing demand from two other channels: original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who bundle it onto their personal computers which are then sold on to consumers; and from financial institutions which are promoting it to their customers in an effort to enhance those relationships.

"Microsoft has historically had links with OEMs and so our share in that channel has grown," said Mr Bray. "But Intuit has responded at the OEM channel with cut-rate pricing," he added.

Although Money has been on the market for the past seven years, this is the first year that its software package, Money 98, has doubled market share and is finally being considered as the alternative personal financial management software to Quicken.

In addition to Money 98, the Money 98 Financial Suite includes planning and investment functionality along with a goal planner for modelling the financial future and a debt planner to model ways to get out of debt.

"It is also easy to jump from Money to Microsoft's Investor on the Web for tracking investments," said Mr Bray. "What we have done is take common sense financial advice and built it into the fabric of our software to give pro-active advice."

While some say the Internet could erode the personal financial management (PFM) market, Mr Bray thinks it is "an interesting way to extend the value of PFM software". People can get information online, say from their banks or brokers, and pull it onto the PFM software held on their hard drives in a secure, passworded file.

"For PFMs for the next couple of years what consumers will want is their personal data to reside locally," said Mr Bray. "So we're superbullish on this category."