TaxCut Premium Home & Business 2003

Rating:
Summary: Buggy and Crude, and That's the Good News!
Review: I had been a faithful TurboTax user since 1996, but this year decided to give TaxCut a chance as I do not like the way Intuit does business, and was hoping for a better option. Unfortunately, I will have to go back to TurboTax next year as TaxCut is very substandard.

I have a moderately complex tax return (including a Schedule C business) and have a fairly firm understanding of the tax codes that pertain to me, which was a good thing, as the interview is NOT complete in several important areas, and presumes that you know how some specifics apply to you. This was especially true in business deductions, and the dreadful Schedule D interrogation. I had one issue on a broker statement that was never addressed in the interview, nor was any help available on how the program wanted it entered (it was a 'cash in lieu' transaction). I checked the help pages and indexes, but it had no idea. I finally had to essentially do my Schedule D by hand and make sure the numbers were correct, as the only way to enter it was as a dividend (which it technically was not.) I have never had problems like this with TurboTax. I am grateful that I had no foreign taxes paid this year; I don't think I would have had the patience for that.

Another problem I had was with the entries for the form 8606 ('Nondeductible IRAs') which couldn't figure my basis from my 2002 return plus my 2003 contributions. The verbiage used to ask the questions in the IRA interview BEGS you to make an error in entering the basis. When I used the 'show form' function, unlike TurboTax, it will not show the IRS form, it shows the IRS form plus a lot of TaxCut worksheet entries intermingled with the real form which is extremely annoying, when all you really want to do is look at the real form to see what the program is doing for certain entries.

The interface itself is laughable. It takes up about the middle half of my monitor, and there is no way to maximize it. Why on earth TaxCut would ignore huge bands of space on the sides of the presentation and make the font small and hard to decipher in a central window is a mystery to me. Beware of the interview. If you have anything other than an extremely simple return, it is inadequate, and you will need help (I recommend the J. K. Lasser "Your Income Tax 2004" book) figuring out how to enter some data.

My overall biggest complaint, though, without doubt, was the error check at the end of the program. After I finished entering my data, it said I had nine errors that had to be corrected, and ten warnings, that I should examine. In all cases the 'errors' were due to things TaxCut did not do correctly. For instance, it imported my 2002 TurboTax results and saw I filed Schedule C-EZ, but this year I needed a regular Schedule C. TaxCut was not smart enough to delete the C-EZ, and in fact came up with a paragraph long explanation of where I needed to look for entries pertinent to the C-EZ and manually delete them or change them to refer to the new Schedule C, and only then could I delete the Schedule C-EZ (which was, at any rate, empty.) The other 'errors' were because TaxCut doesn't grasp what 401K contributions do to your W-2. I wrestled with fixing these errors for about two days. Ugh.

I can't recommend this product. I gave it two stars only for the simple reason that after all was said and done, it did compute the taxes correctly, and the state taxes were actually a snap.

Save yourself a headache, buy TurboTax instead. I don't like Intuit either, but I like staying sane more than I dislike Intuit. Never again will I use TaxCut.

Rating:
Summary: IF YOU NEED 1041 YOU ARE STUCK WITH THIS
Review: I have used the personal Taxcut for years and love it....I needed to file a 1041 for a family trust beginning last year so I looked into the business version of Turbotax and Taxcut...Turbotax didn't list a 1041, so I had to get Taxcut Home and Business....The 1041 form was buggy and frustrating (save your work often) but I managed to produce the forms and attachments eventually even though inexperienced in trust taxes...a word to the wise: don't wait until the last minute to download upgrades (you get a program "shell" in the box and almost everything must be downloaded from H&R Block)...I had to file for extension --not a major hassle since it's automatic and for 6 months with business taxes-- because I couldn't get the upgrades pre-April 15th.

Rating:
Summary: Worst software I've ever tried to use
Review: I purchased this software based on reviews I read on Amazon where Turbo Tax wasn't rated as highly on the day I was researching. In reading the reviews today, I am gratified to learn that my problems were common among other users.
The problems I encountered were extreme difficulty installing the software and then not having updates available yet. When they finally were available, then I had trouble getting the updates to download and function properly. I had a problem getting assistance because the help people operate on East Coast time so they aren't available in the evenings when I'm working on this. I cannot believe that any product related to taxes would provide such limited hours of support. Long and short - after about 6 frustrating days, I gave up on TaxCut. I went to the IRS and my state website and downloaded extension forms as I had run out of time, patience, and sanity. For the aggravation I just experienced, I want to warn anyone else that this software is horrible. Since I had to do so much uninstalling and reinstalling, my computer is noticeably slower than before my Tax Cut experience. I hope that I didn't screw up my computer as they had me doing all kinds of things to it to try to get the software to download. They said the registry was not fully installing for some reason. Now I think maybe my computer was trying to tell me something - like "please don't load this garbage into my hard drive" - STAY AWAY FROM TAX CUT HOME & BUSINESS!

Rating:
Summary: Use At Your Own Risk
Review: I selected this product because it was the only comprehensive business product I could download (why pay for and wait for shipping if you can avoid it?).

I experienced many of the problems of the other reviewers, including:

--Gaps in the interview process that simply refer you to IRS instructions.

--Software refused to launch after installing state product, requiring a reinstall. Fortunately, I had already printed out a draft of my return, so I'm just looking at having to do some data entry rather than start from scratch.

--State product for my state (NY) was worse than the free, fill-in version of the form available from the New York State website. Not only did it simply display the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance instructions instead of walking me through my return, but the "updated" form refused to print because, according to the software, it wasn't approved by New York State.

Fortunately, TaxCut offers a no-questions-asked refund, which I took them up on for the state business product. Because the refund is for a downloaded product, I didn't have to mail any disks back or fill out any forms to get my refund.

I'm sticking with TaxCut, bugs and all, for my federal return because it is less than half the price of TurboTax , and because I don't want to pay for and wait for shipping of a product I have no way of knowing is any better.

Here's what I suggest for other intrepid souls who wish to use TaxCut to file their business returns:

--View the product for what it is: simply an aid to filling out your own taxes.

--Become thoroughly familiar with your own tax situation; get tax books and download the IRS forms and instructions as well. Don't rely on the software to know anything you don't--and be pleasantly surprised when it does.

--Check your completed return carefully for any anomalies (mine inexplicably included a form I didn't need).

--Do not purchase the state product; you'll do much better with the interactive forms available from your state website.

Rating:
Summary: Worst program EVER
Review: If this product even exists next year, I will be amazed.

This program is by far the WORST program I have ever used. The interface is bad. The installation is buggy. The data entry only "remembers" the first letter of what you type and you don't find that out until later in the interview process. The updates disable the program so it no longer loads. The tax forms are still "out of date" and "unapproved" even though it is days before the corporate filing deadline. And then there is that slight problem of it not printing.

Oh, and I tried installing this on three different computers with three different configurations (XP-Pro, 98, NT). It doesn't work on any of them! The fact that it does not work (in different ways, of course) really shows its bugginess... I would have almost thought the install on my CD was bad if it was consistently sucky. But no. This is just a horrible piece of software.

At one point I did get some semblance of the software to run (no printing, but I didn't know that until I finished the effort), but in the so-called "interview" it just lists off almost random questions that you have to figure out what the hell they mean. If I was that much of a tax-wiz, I wouldn't need a program like this! I expected some layman's-language guidance, but instead get random quotes from the IRS form. With no explanation, even when I click on the supposed "help" (which tells me how to use my mouse or tab in the program - gee that helps).

I am absolutely taking them up on their 100% guarantee and getting a refund. This embarrassment of a program should never have seen the light of day, and can only be horrible joke of some kind. Run away from this program, and get a refund if you already wasted your money on this.