Contrary to the widespread belief that iPhone users are ‘all play,’ some of the most popular apps to surface in late February and March were those designed to facilitate tax filing and estimate returns. As one might expect, while many independent developers vied for mobile-users attention, the mainstays of desktop tax-software programs reigned victorious yet again. Mashable, a site that reports on mobile-web trends, spotlighted three of the best tax-expediting apps for this season: H&R Block’s Tax Answers, TaxCaster’s iPhone app, and Turbo Tax’s SnapTax. These apps assist users by providing quick estimates without requiring complete information, and in some cases provide guidance for those with trickier returns. Turbo Tax’s SnapTax, however, is only available for Californians, though the reason for this exclusivity is unknown. Furthermore, the cost of these apps, unlike some of their more complex desktop counterparts is quite reasonable—many of them are free to download, others are priced around $10—making them even more appealing to judicious Smartphone users.

While these and the profusion of other, independent tax apps are not without their respective flaws, consumer response to tax apps has been warm, as evidenced by the uptick in purchases of them in the last few weeks. The trend also comes as a relative surprise, considering that the majority of mobile-web users have expressed indifference towards mobile banking apps with an analogous purpose. More predictably, traffic on sites such as hrblock.com and turbotax.com has exploded in the last month, a portion of which, presumably, has come from mobile-device users. As it effects app development, the lesson we can take away from this trend is: there’s a season for that.