Who owns TaxAct? Ownership structure explained (2026)

TaxAct is the value option in American tax software. It sits well behind TurboTax and H&R Block in brand recognition, but it has quietly filed more than 111 million returns since 1998 and has been sold three times. Its ownership history includes a founder-led start, a private equity buyout, a blocked antitrust deal, a decade inside a public company, and a second private equity owner that bolted it onto a professional tax software business.

That history matters because each owner used TaxAct for a different purpose. For one it was a growth investment, for another a cash engine that funded a pivot into wealth management, and for its current owner it is the consumer half of a two-sided tax platform. Understanding who owns TaxAct explains its pricing, its product bets, and the regulatory scrutiny it now carries.

This article breaks down who owns TaxAct, how the ownership came together, and why the structure matters for the company, its investors, and the millions of people who file with it.

TaxAct was founded in 1998 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, under the name 2nd Story Software. Its four founders, Lance Dunn, Jerry McConnell, Cammie Greif, and Alan Sperfslage, had built tax software before and set out to sell a cheaper do-it-yourself alternative. TaxAct describes itself as the first online software provider to offer free tax filing, a positioning that still shapes its brand.

The company is now based in Dallas, Texas. Connecticut's attorney general described it as "Texas-based" in August 2026, and its recent press releases carry a Dallas dateline.

TaxAct sells online tax filing to individuals and small businesses across four tiers: a do-it-yourself product, Xpert Assist (DIY with help from a tax expert), Xpert Full Service (an expert prepares the return), and small business filing. It also sells TaxAct Professional to independent preparers. In 2026 it launched SmartFile AI, an in-product filing assistant, and a Claude Connector that lets users query its tax knowledge base from inside Anthropic's Claude.

TaxAct does not publish financial results. The last public figures date from its time inside Blucora: in 2021, Blucora's Tax Software segment, which was TaxAct, reported revenue of $227.0 million and segment operating income of $81.9 million, a margin of about 36%. At the parent level, Taxwell says it serves more than 3 million DIY filers and more than 100,000 tax professionals, and handles more than 24 million filings a year.

TaxAct is a private company with no listed shares. It is owned by Taxwell, a holding company that Cinven created to combine TaxAct with Drake Software. Cinven, a private equity firm headquartered in London, controls Taxwell through its funds. TaxAct's own press releases describe it as "a Taxwell company" and "a business of Cinven."

The structure has three layers. Cinven's funds sit at the top, Taxwell is the holding company in the middle, and TaxAct and Drake operate as separate brands underneath, one serving individual filers and the other serving professional preparers. Taxwell's website also lists 1040.com and TaxAct Professional among its brands.

None of TaxAct's founders is known to hold a stake today. The founders gave up control in 2004, when TA Associates bought a majority of the business, and TA Associates sold its full holding when InfoSpace bought the company in 2012. Any remaining founder shares would have been bought out in that deal, when TaxAct's operating company became a wholly owned InfoSpace subsidiary.

What is not disclosed is whether TaxAct or Taxwell managers hold equity under Cinven. Private equity owners commonly grant management stakes, but neither Cinven nor Taxwell has published the split.

TaxAct never raised venture capital rounds in the usual sense. Its capital came through a series of ownership changes.

Cinven is TaxAct's sole controlling owner. The firm first entered US tax software in early 2021, when it made a significant investment in Drake Software, a professional tax preparation provider serving more than 70,000 tax offices at the time. It then agreed on November 1, 2022, to buy TaxAct from Blucora for about $720 million and combine the two under one holding company. The deal closed on December 19, 2022. Cinven partner Daniel Garin is listed as the firm's lead on the Taxwell investment. The exact Cinven fund that holds the stake has not been disclosed.

Blucora, which began life as the search company InfoSpace, owned TaxAct for nearly 11 years. It used the business as a steady source of cash, then sold it to focus on wealth management. Blucora netted about $620 million after taxes from the sale and planned to return $400 million to $450 million to its shareholders. It renamed itself Avantax in January 2023 and has no remaining stake in TaxAct.

TA Associates, the Boston-based private equity firm, was TaxAct's first institutional owner. It held a majority stake from 2004 until January 2012, when it sold its full position to InfoSpace.

The only hard valuation marker is Cinven's roughly $720 million purchase price in 2022, about 2.5 times the $287.5 million InfoSpace paid a decade earlier. Neither Cinven nor Taxwell has disclosed a newer valuation, revenue, or earnings figure, so any current value for TaxAct on its own would be an estimate. Readers who want to test a range can run the known deal figures through a business valuation calculator, but the result would carry wide error bars.

Private equity firms typically hold companies for several years before selling. Cinven has owned Drake since 2021 and TaxAct since late 2022. No sale process, IPO filing, or recapitalization for Taxwell has been publicly reported as of September 2026.

Dermot Halpin is the most senior executive over TaxAct. He joined as executive chair of Drake and TaxAct on December 19, 2022, the day the Cinven acquisition closed, and has since been named chief executive of Taxwell. He previously ran the attractions and vacation rentals business at TripAdvisor and led Expedia's Europe, Middle East, and Africa operations. In July 2026, Cinven published an interview with Halpin on Taxwell's AI strategy, which confirms he still leads the group.

Curtis Campbell, a former Intuit executive, ran TaxAct as president and CEO from 2018 and stayed on after the Cinven deal. He left in 2023, then joined H&R Block in 2024 as president of global consumer tax and chief product officer. He became H&R Block's CEO on January 1, 2026, which means TaxAct's former leader now runs one of its two largest competitors.

TaxAct has not publicly named a standalone president or CEO since Campbell's departure. Recent product announcements are attributed to Taxwell executives, such as Noha Ghazouani, Taxwell's vice president of product management. That suggests TaxAct is now run as a brand inside the Taxwell group rather than as a separately led company, though Taxwell has not said so directly.

On governance, Taxwell's board is not fully published. Confirmed members include Halpin and Kathleen Traynor DeRose, a finance and fintech veteran who joined in July 2024 and also sits on the boards of Experian, Voya Financial, and the London Stock Exchange Group. As is typical for a private equity portfolio company, Cinven representatives are likely to hold board seats, but their names have not been confirmed.

TaxAct's ownership was shaped by a court. In 2011, the Justice Department sued to stop H&R Block from buying TaxAct, arguing the deal would leave digital tax preparation controlled by two players. Judge Beryl Howell of the US District Court for the District of Columbia agreed and blocked the merger on October 31, 2011. It was the Justice Department's first win in a litigated merger challenge since 2003. H&R Block walked away two weeks later, and InfoSpace bought TaxAct instead. The ruling still matters: it established TaxAct as a meaningful competitor, which makes any future sale to Intuit or H&R Block unlikely to clear regulators.

Between January 2018 and December 2022, TaxAct used Meta and Google tracking tools on its website and passed along detailed financial data, including rounded adjusted gross income, refund amounts, and number of dependents. The practice drew a congressional investigation, and in October 2023 a group of lawmakers led by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden wrote to TaxAct and other tax preparers about potential penalties for misusing taxpayer data.

TaxAct settled a private class action for $14.95 million, which received final approval in December 2024, although an appeal by two class members has held up the cash payments. In August 2026, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced a separate $275,000 settlement that requires a review committee for tracking tools, website tag monitoring, and two independent audits. The state noted that TaxAct is now under new ownership and cooperated with the investigation. The conduct happened almost entirely under Blucora, but the compliance obligations now fall on Cinven's watch. For context on why those pixels were valuable, the data fed the ad-targeting systems behind how Google makes money.

TaxAct remains one of eight members of the IRS Free File Alliance for the 2026 filing season, after Intuit and H&R Block left the program in earlier years. That keeps it in the government's free-filing channel, which brings volume but little direct revenue. The IRS canceled its own Direct File service in November 2025, which removed a government competitor and put more weight on private free-filing options. How TaxAct converts free users into paid tiers such as Xpert Assist is now central to its economics, and a regulatory change in either direction is a standing item on any risk register for the business.

TaxAct's ownership explains its strategy. Under Blucora, it was run for cash: a 36% segment margin in 2021 helped fund Blucora's move into wealth management. Under Cinven, it is being run for growth and integration. Pairing a consumer tax brand with Drake's professional software gives Taxwell reach on both sides of the tax market, and the recent push into AI filing assistants and expert-assisted tiers is the kind of investment a private owner can make without quarterly earnings pressure.

The structure also shapes competition. TaxAct competes with TurboTax, whose parent has a widely held public shareholder base covered in our look at Intuit's ownership, and with H&R Block, now led by TaxAct's own former CEO. Because the 2011 ruling blocked a sale to H&R Block, TaxAct's realistic exit paths are another private equity buyer, a strategic buyer outside the big two, or a public listing of Taxwell. A useful parallel is Quicken's private equity ownership, another consumer finance brand that has passed between financial owners rather than returning to a strategic parent.

For investors, the key point is that TaxAct's value is tied to Taxwell's performance as a whole. Cinven will likely sell or list the combined group rather than TaxAct alone, so the price will depend on how well the consumer and professional sides work together. A market analysis template that maps the DIY, assisted, and professional segments is a practical way to frame that bet.

For customers, private ownership brings fewer public disclosures. TaxAct does not report revenue, filer counts by tier, or profit, and its data-handling commitments are now set by state settlements rather than public-company filings. Filers who care about privacy have more assurance than before 2023, because the Connecticut settlement requires ongoing audits, but less visibility into how the business is run.

TaxAct is owned by Cinven, a European private equity firm, through a holding company called Taxwell. Taxwell also owns Drake Software. Cinven bought TaxAct from Blucora for about $720 million in a deal that closed on December 19, 2022.

TaxAct has not publicly named a standalone CEO since Curtis Campbell left in 2023. The business is overseen by Dermot Halpin, chief executive of parent company Taxwell. Campbell is now CEO of H&R Block.

No. TaxAct is privately held and has no stock ticker. It was part of publicly traded Blucora from 2012 to 2022, but Blucora sold it to Cinven, and Blucora itself later became Avantax.

TaxAct was founded in 1998 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as 2nd Story Software. Its founders were Lance Dunn, Jerry McConnell, Cammie Greif, and Alan Sperfslage.

H&R Block agreed to buy TaxAct in 2010, but the Justice Department sued to block the deal. A federal judge ruled against the merger on October 31, 2011, finding it would reduce competition in digital tax preparation, and H&R Block abandoned the purchase.

The most recent public marker is the roughly $720 million Cinven paid in 2022, up from the $287.5 million InfoSpace paid in 2012. No newer valuation has been disclosed, and TaxAct does not publish its revenue or profit.