Rating: 
Summary: Poof! 2003 Vanishes on April 14
Review: 2nd year I've used it. It has saved me a lot of money but I am looking a competitor in 2004.
After relgiously entering and tracking a ton of donations during 2003, just before I was about to export to TurboTax, there was a glitch and the software decided that I hadn't purchased 2003. I had to rekey every donation item (sometimes over 100 items in a single donation) for 2003.
We were able to get the rights back but the data had vaporized. No explanation was available. I've been a big supporter and have recommended it to over a dozen friends. Not anymore.
Rating: 
Summary: Its A Joke
Review: For years I have bought Intuit products (Quicken, TurboTax, ...) but never before have I been so disappointed. Its Deductible should really be titled "Its A Joke." Yes, you can track your donations (cash, non-cash, mileage, medical, and other property). And yes, you can print a report
and supposedly import them to TurboTax (I did not try it). But that's it. I bought the product to not only track donations (a fairly simple task) but to also use the "market value" data to properly value all of my personal assets--my home inventory--for Quicken and for insurance purposes. Getting this information out of Its Deductible is essential impossible. It does NOT provide a report to print out the market values (good/ fair/ poor condition) for a category of items. The only reports it does provide are limited. The only way to get this information is to write it down by hand. Oh, and by the way, the shrunk-wrapped product does NOT come with this market data on the CD. You first have to connect to the Internet. For security purposes (e.g. read about all the PC break-ins lately) my financial software and data are on a computer NOT connected to the Internet. To get anything useful from Its Deductible you'll have to connect to the Internet--a requirement that the box does NOT specify. The program will then proceed to download a 2.9 megabyte update--which on a 26.6 kbyte dial-up connection takes a loooooong time. Worse yet is that the packaging says nothing about a "basic" version and a "deluxe" version--for an upgrade price. In the box I obviously got the "basic" version which does NOT allow you to download market value data for "Computers and Electronics." Come-on Intuit, how about some resonable advertising on your package? They also don't tell you on the package that the product is only good for one of two calendar years (e.g. 2003/2004). It's NOT a reference product that you could use for a few years. No, you'll have to buy it all over again next year. The box says nothing about that!... Intuit, you've outdone yourself this time. Its Deductible is-- Its a Joke. I wasted hours wrestling with it to try and pry some useful market data out of it to value my personal property (to better decide what to donate, what to sell, and what to insure). It was a waste of time and a waste of money. As a long-time Intuit customer they are pushing me to the competition. The bottom line--don't buy this product. Regretfully,
Frustrated Frank
Rating: 
Summary: Helpful Product, but Deceptive Advertising
Review: Gripe 1: The back of the box says: "You need ItsDeductible... If you donate clothing, household goods, or other items to charity..." The inside cover lists specific examples, the last on the list is "Computer Monitor", in "Good" condition. It looks as if you can deduct $107 for such an item. What the box DOESN'T say is that to access values for "Electronics and Computers", you need "ItsDeductible Deluxe features". For these you pay an additional $10 to "upgrade your software online". Gripe 2: There's nothing on the box to tell you the software can only be used for one tax year - and you must buy another license to use it for a second tax year. You don't discover this until you start the program for the first time AFTER you've installed the software. The example on the back cover of the box shows the tax year is a pull-down selection list, but when you see the actual screen, the year is just fixed text showing the year you selected when you first ran the program. This is very tacky. It's hard to believe it's legal to do this. I presume Intuit is assuming it will be too much trouble for anyone to go after them. These irritations are a shame because the product otherwise has good potential. Yes you could use an Excel spreadsheet as I already did to track my original donations, but correlating donation and value is much quicker with ItsDeductible. My one electronic item? (a used boom-box in good condition) NO WAY I'LL PAY THE $10 UPGRADE. I'll just make up a dollar value and think less of Intuit.
Rating:
Summary: Helpful Product, but Deceptive Advertising
Review: Gripe 1: The back of the box says: "You need ItsDeductible... If you donate clothing, household goods, or other items to charity..." The inside cover lists specific examples, the last on the list is "Computer Monitor", in "Good" condition. It looks as if you can deduct $107 for such an item. What the box DOESN'T say is that to access values for "Electronics and Computers", you need "ItsDeductible Deluxe features". For these you pay an additional $10 to "upgrade your software online". Gripe 2: There's nothing on the box to tell you the software can only be used for one tax year - and you must buy another license to use it for a second tax year. You don't discover this until you start the program for the first time AFTER you've installed the software. The example on the back cover of the box shows the tax year is a pull-down selection list, but when you see the actual screen, the year is just fixed text showing the year you selected when you first ran the program. This is very tacky. It's hard to believe it's legal to do this. I presume Intuit is assuming it will be too much trouble for anyone to go after them. These irritations are a shame because the product otherwise has good potential. Yes you could use an Excel spreadsheet as I already did to track my original donations, but correlating donation and value is much quicker with ItsDeductible. My one electronic item? (a used boom-box in good condition) NO WAY I'LL PAY THE $10 UPGRADE. I'll just make up a dollar value and think less of Intuit.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the money or trouble
Review: I agree with what all of the other reviewers said. At the basic level you don't get fair market values for computers and electronics - that feature is in the Deluxe version. I was truly disappointed by this product and I'm a Turbo Tax user!
Rating:
Summary: Its Deductible for 2003
Review: I am using Turbo Tax and was suckered into downloading this program to estimate my non-cash donations to charity. It sounded GREAT, but it did not install properly. I went to the Intuit website for help -- don't bother to do that!!! After a couple of hours on the phone (the website was useless!), I was promised a refund of the $ 19.95 charged to my credit card. I have my fingers crossed on that! They could not figure out what the problem was! -- I am going to try to use it from a CD from Amazon.com!
Rating:
Summary: Avoid due to known issue
Review: I bought It's Deductible last year. My computer's hard-drive started to crash in November so I backed up my data. This week I reinstalled it but can not open the program due to database errors. First it said that the file ID*.mdb was read-only (error 3051). Then when I unchecked read only I got database error 3050. Either way, there is no way for me to open the program and access all of the information I put in last year. When I went to the help site's "Chat with Live Rep", here is what the tech help person wrote: "C Shiny: XXXXX, Thank you very much for being patient , we understand your position and we like to inform you this has been a problem with most of the customers and our technical people are working extensively on this issue. We are going to resolve and place the solution in the www.turbotaxsupport.com website, we apologize for the discomfort. Please bear with us. " They apologize for my "discomfort" Discomfort isn't exactly the word I would use to summarize my frustration at having lost all of my information.
Rating: 
Summary: Does what it says it will do. No more and no less.
Review: I bought this after reading about it in USA Today. While it isn't all I hoped for, it was very helpful in organizing and valuing most of our many donations for the year. You have to buy an upgrade to value electronics though, which is a pain. Also, the installation is only good for one tax year. Since I picked 2003, it says I need to buy another copy for 2004 (not so much of an issue for 2004 buyers...). It did export nicely to my turbotax. Oh, one more thing - you can track medical expenses and miscellaneous expenses in it, but you can't export them to turbotax. Its up to the user whether they want to waste their time doing that, but I did not realize that at first.
Rating:
Summary: Better than having to look up items on your own
Review: I bought this after reading about it in USA Today. While it isn't all I hoped for, it was very helpful in organizing and valuing most of our many donations for the year. You have to buy an upgrade to value electronics though, which is a pain. Also, the installation is only good for one tax year. Since I picked 2003, it says I need to buy another copy for 2004 (not so much of an issue for 2004 buyers...). It did export nicely to my turbotax. Oh, one more thing - you can track medical expenses and miscellaneous expenses in it, but you can't export them to turbotax. Its up to the user whether they want to waste their time doing that, but I did not realize that at first.
Rating:
Summary: Does what it says it will do. No more and no less.
Review: I bought this product in January 2003 and began to enter all donations, both cash and non-cash donations. The product was simple to use and it ended up saving me a large chunk off my taxes. In December 2003 I was ready for the next version, but it was not available, so I bought the H&R Block Version - Deduction Pro, since I had done my taxes using TaxCut (which I preferred over TurboTax - but that's another story). I waited until I had a substantial amount of non-cash donations to make, which was after the 60 day return period. Bad move! The version I bought in December 2003 was for the tax year 2003. The 2004 tax year version is not due to be released until August or September 2004. In order to benefit from either of these products you have to enter as you go, otherwise you will miss out on the value of the deduction. I contacted the H&R Block Customer Service people (via e-mail) to see about upgrading from 2003 to 2004 and they basically told me that I was out of luck and that they had no good idea of when the 2004 version was coming out. Bottom line - It's Deductible is easy, good and, best of all, available for the tax year that you are tracking.
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