Rating: 
Summary: ByeBye TurboTax...Hellooooo TaxCut
Review: I've used TurboTax for 4 years. This year I was getting ready to buy it again. Came to amazon to check price and began reading the reviews. TT made changes and the bad reviews scared me. I decided not to take the chance and checked into TaxCut. Sure glad I did. Just loaded it and began on this years taxes. Spent about 2 hrs and finished 75%. I was worried it would take me forever. The sofware loaded on W98 great. Imported last years TT fine. Updates over cable modem went without a hitch. It did freeze once in the middle of adding a capital gain (actually a loss). But I restarted, went back to the form and it had saved all entries up to the crash. No problems. I love it. The interview is more thorough than TT. I haven't finished yet but so far so GREAT! And I'm getting money back from Uncle Sam. Yeeehawww! Right now I'm glad they forced me to change!
Rating: 
Summary: Switching Back to TurboTax Next Year
Review: After using Turbotax for years, I decided to try TaxCut Deluxe because of concerns over spyware and product activation in Turbotax. A recent PC Magazine review recommends either program, so I expected little difference between the two. After trying TaxCut Deluxe 2002 I must disagree! TaxCut seems like a product that was brought to market without being fully tested. The TurboTax user interface is much more polished, and the TurboTax help has more depth. Examples of TaxCut bugs:
- printing W-4 with "Not for Filing" option selected cuts off all the data on the printout.
- Tax Estimator Form for looking a multiple scenarios displays extra columns that can't be deleted.
- Cursor doesn't follow standard Windows convention of moving to the next field when Tab key is pressed on some forms.
- Several typos in the text of help screens and forms. I'll probably switch back to TurboTax next year to get back to a polished and mature product. (If Intuit pulls their head out and get rid of the spyware and product activation problems in Turbotax.)
Rating:
Summary: Overall a great buy.
Review: TaxCut 2002 Deluxe is a easy to use tax program for a very reasonable price. Upon starting a return, the user is prompted to answer simple questions during an "interview" phase. After a few yes/no responses and some data entry (assuming you don't use Quicken or Money), your return is complete. It includes easy navigation to return to sections of your return not yet completed. TaxCut is better than the popular TurboTax since TaxCut doesn't install resource-wasting spyware and because TaxCut is cheaper. My one complaint is that TaxCut prompts you to "update" the software before u file the return. This is a mjor problem if your internet connection is 56k dial-up since the update is 14MB. With a broadband connection, however, this isn't a concern. Overall a great bargain!
Rating:
Summary: Glitches
Review: I never thought I'd find a glitch in a reputable tax accounting software program but TaxCut Deluxe has one. This probably wouldn't affect 99.9% of potential buyers, but it did affect me. My daughter had unearned income of over $1500 last year from sale of stocks. She is 12 years old, and the tax program picked up on this and stated it would generate the "kiddie tax" but it won't figure it out for you. You need to know your gross income, but you can't access that on the return at the time. It tells you to complete Form 8615 which you can't do until you complete your return first. Very frustrating.
Rating: 
Summary: Loyal TurboTax user switches, discovers TaxCut issue
Review: UPDATE:... The issue with the zip and state not matching was resolved by completing blanking my W-2 out that was imported from TurboTax and entering all the information again. I was on the phone with Tech Support (a supervisor-which I demanded after being told I needed to see a tax advisor because I live in a different state than my employer). Two emails to tech support produced [nothing] and took 2 days for each reply. Then, I spent 1 hour (on my dime) with Tech Support and figured out the problem myself while on the phone. I haven't tried to print yet, I hope I have no problems. After my complete experience, I would probably take my rating to 2.5 stars. I've had 2 people now tell me that TurboTax gave them no problems. I think next year, I'm switching back. It's not worth the ... price difference... especially since I spent more than that on long-distance with tech support. INITIAL REVIEW: After using TurboTax for many years, then reading the reviews about the spyware software, I chose to go with TaxCut this year. I am here to say there's not much difference in the two products. Program downloaded fine. I was able to download last year's TurboTax information just fine. Interview is much like TurboTax. My taxes are fairly simple (1040 with itemized deductions), I was done in about 40 minutes. Now comes the most frustrating issue (Please help if you'd had this issue yourself). My paycheck (thus W-2) comes from my parent company, which is located in a different state than where I live. The program automatically inserts the W-2 state into my (background info) state field. Therefore, when I tried to E-file, the program found errors (state and zip don't match) and pointed this out to me (and will not let me E-file until remedied). So I changed the state I live in to match the zip code of where I live ... and guess what... the program automatically updated the W-2 state -- which then caused the same error there. Each change automatically updated the other area and so far there has been no solution. (I even tried the Override feature.) I will send another review if (when) this issue is resolved. But so far, I've spent 40 minutes doing my taxes and another hour trying to fix this stupid programming loop to be able to E-file. Surely I'm not the only taxpayer whose employer is located in another state! If this were not an issue, I'd give 5 stars -- and I was a loyal TurboTax user.
Rating: 
Summary: Unhappy TaxCut user.
Review: I have used TurboTax for the last 10 years, but based on the recommendations of people who wrote rave reviews about TaxCut; I thought I would try it. I found it to be very confusing and went out to day and purchased TurboTax. I have a used TaxCut if anyone is interested.
Rating: 
Summary: I'M GLAD I MADE THE SWITCH
Review: Because of the Turbo Tax activation problem, I have made the switch to TaxCut. I liked Turbo Tax a lot and thought it was the best. But now, I must say: TAxcut is the best. It is extremly easy to use, has many useful and improved features; and best of all: it is way cheaper than Turbo Tax. I will stay w/ Tax Cut for many years to come, unless TAx cut starts to adapt the activation policy.
Rating:
Summary: Good Product - it gets the job done
Review: I'm one of those who switched to TaxCut this year because of TurboTax's activation scheme. It's too bad since I consider it to be a great product and have used it for several years. However, it's not so great a product that I'd bother with its non-value adding hurdles - I've got better things to do with my time, like my taxes. TaxCut is good - not as good as TurboTax in my opinion. Still, it imported my TurboTax file without a hitch and I did my federal and state taxes in about an hour. However, there was some bugginess with updating the state tax forms - it took a few tries. Also, it's cheaper! If TaxCut decides to follow the path of distrusting its customers, then I may very well just switch back to TurboTax, unless the price difference is too much.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth a nickel
Review: After reading an Amazon review about how superior this
product was to Turbotax, I decided to give it a try. I've
used turbotax for the past 5 years and never had any trouble
with it. My first surprise was when I downloaded the
update. It took close to an hour. As I went along, I was
annoyed by being referred to USGovt publications which,
of course, I didn't have lying around. The interface between the questionnaire and the actual
forms was tricky to access. There was not enough room to
list all my charitable contributions. At the end, I attempted to print out my tax form on my
dot matrix printer and got two strips of type: about
1 inch wide on the left side and 2-1/2 inches wide
on the other. The middle had a few stray empty boxes in
it. It did not look very fileable. I went back to the help file, and got nowhere. I tried calling them, and was put on hold. This
was not an 800-number call, which they don't
seem to have -- it was at my expense. After a
half hour of this, I gave up. What a really bad product this is!
Rating:
Summary: No updates available??
Review: After completion of all data entry for my Federal return, TaxCut ran an error check that resulted in a message that this was a half-baked version. I was instructed to download an update. Well, imagine my surprise when I found that THE UPDATE WAS NOT AVAILABLE! Now, what am I supposed to do - file an extension until they can get the software updated? This is a terrible way to treat a long-time user... Make that a "former" long-time user.
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