Do You Offer RAL? I'll like to switsh

[kanny34]

I found out ATX charges each of my clients who applied for "any" bank service (i) Bank Technology Fee $15 and (ii) Transmitter Add-on fee $10. This make a total $25 per each client. I am really unhappy that ATX would charge this amount because it makes my bank service quite expensive.

Please, for those offering bank service did you notice this? I think it's very unfair and I am really considering shopping tax software.

Thanks for reading my venting

Kay, NY

[David1980]

It seems to me that the bank fees are somewhat standard in this industry unfortunately. For example, I know that even the $30 "bank fee" charged by santa barbara often gets rebated to the tax software partially. So you can actually end up with the software making even more money on a bank product than you realize because it's camouflaged as part of the bank's fees. Some software companies flat out will ask you when you're talking to their sales people "How many bank products do you do?" because they make a chunk of change on them and can negotiate the price based on bank products.

So you will need to go beyond simply asking how much the software charges for the bank fees, because often they can't even figure out what they're making per bank product due to the complex agreements between different banks. Instead, you might ask questions like "If I go with Santa Barbara, how much would the total of all fees be on a $3,000 RAL?" They may have a chart or something.

So pick one bank to comparison shop with (whatever bank you plan to use probably) and be careful how you phrase the question. :)