Rating: 
Summary: Seriously buggy---may cost me big time
Review: This software has a serious bug that may cost me a great deal of money.My wife lived in Illinois for a year while I lived most of the year in California. In such a case, it is imperative that we file our Federal returns separately, otherwise Illinois will tax us on the money I earned in California! TaxCut not only didn't warn us of this, it incorrectly computed the Illinois taxes using the part-year resident form. This was in spite of my having specified that my wife was in Illinois the whole year, and in spite of it being very plainly stated on the Illinois form that under such circumstances, a couple filing jointly could not use the form! Unfortunately, I allowed TaxCut to e-file my return before I checked the state returns. Now I have to file an amendment. I was also unable to get any help from TaxCut's customer support to stop the e-filing before it went through. I'll never use their software again.
Rating: 
Summary: As good as TurboTax... from 2 years ago.
Review: This year, I purchased both TurboTax & Taxcut. I've used TurboTax for the last several years, but decided to look into switching after hearing about TurboTax's copy-protection fiasco. So obviously, the "big plus" for TaxCut is the ability to do your taxes on multiple computers without buying another copy. However, that seems to be the only plus compared to TurboTax. Here are the issues I had with TaxCut: - Cannot handle large fonts. If you are using windows at a high resolution and have chosen large fonts, be aware that none of the screens will look correct. Input fields will overlap each other, the running "refund" amount will be cut off, etc. Very annoying.
- Does not take advantage of high resolution displays. If you maximize the window, it still only makes good use of what appears to be a 640x480 part of the window. To be fair, TurboTax has this same issue.
- A nice new feature of this year's TurboTax is the ability to import your W2 electronically. TaxCut also has this feature, but said that it couldn't import my data! My employer uses ADP for payroll, so I don't understand why TaxCut couldn't do this.
- TurboTax downloaded my 1099-B information from Salamon Smith Barney. Taxcut could not. *Very* tedious entering stock sales by hand. I remember doing this 2 years ago with TurboTax.
- Dates require 4-digit years to be entered. I don't see why they can't accept 2-digit years for ease-of-entry, and then convert them. I believe TurboTax does this. It basically feels like TurboTax from a couple years ago. It took me much longer to enter all my information into TaxCut, due to not importing my 1099-B or W2 information electronically. Not a bad program, but definitely second-rate compared to TurboTax.
Rating:
Summary: Beware the hidden charges!
Review: Yes, it costs only...and (after jumping through hoops) you can get [a] rebate. But check the fine print on the back of the box and you find, "TaxCut State sold separately."...My state return is really rather simple once the federal one's done, but TaxCut wants [extra] for the state software. And when you get ready to e-file, Voila!, that costs extra, too...Add to this the unhelpful Help and Search features. And on Schedule A, the program blithely allowed me to enter the state tax I had paid, even though it had already done that for me. I caught the duplication when I finally got a look at the form itself. The ultimate frustration came when TaxCut locked up my computer as I tried to print my record copies of the forms. I'll try something else next year.
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