Rating: 
Summary: 7+ year user of Taxcut - makes doing your taxes easy
Review: Taxcut is excellent. It's just like having your own personal accountant right there with you. In fact, it has shown me where I could save additional money on a number of occasions. That alone has more than paid for the software for the entire time I've been using it. I also like how Taxcut helps make your tax return more "audit proof," and how quick and almost automatic it is. It uses an easy question and answer process. Then it prints out everything you need ready to send in (or e-file if you want). All in all, Taxcut is very easy to use and makes doing your taxes pretty darn painless. I've been recommending Taxcut to my friends and neighbors for a long time. It works.
Rating: 
Summary: No Product Activation / Spy ware
Review: Purchased TurboTax as I do each year. This year due
to big problems with the Product Activation I returned
TurboTax and purchased TaxCut. Not only did I have no trouble
running the software, it imported all of my data from last
years TurboTax files.
Rating:
Summary: My 6th year in a row with TaxCut
Review: This will be my 6th year in a row to use TaxCut. In the past I have never had any problems with this software. It is so simple to do your taxes. I even have investment and rental house income and many deductions, it is nice to be able to do my taxes myself without having to pay an accountant. I especially like how easily it is to electronically file my federal and state returns. I recommend this software to all of my family and friends, it hasn't done me wrong yet.
Rating:
Summary: Better than Turbotax
Review: Buy TaxCut NOT Intuit's TurboTax. Intuit's TurboTax installs C-Dilla spyware, which hogs your computers resources, and doesn't get removed when Turbotax is uninstalled. You would also have to purchase a new copy or spend lots of time on the phone with intuit trying to convince them your not a criminal if you upgrade yoru machine. None of that is worth it, buy Turbotax instead!How dare they add anything that could remotely be spyware to one of the most sensitive things (Tax return) that's on my computer.
Rating: 
Summary: Will not import TurboTax file
Review: I thought I'd try TaxCut since TurboTax decided to cripple their software this year. I can't say they compare well so far. First off TaxCut claims you can import TurboTax files from the prior year. I have tried every possible combination and filed a report to TaxCut support and have been unable to resolve the problem. To TaxCuts credit I submitted the problem on their web page and was called at my home the very next day by support. I doubt TurboTax would do the same. The program looks for old *.t01 files regardless of whether or not you select to import TaxCut or TurboTax files. So I thought maybe I'd do it manually. If you quit the program and save, it starts back up at the section of questions you left at, not at exactly where you left off like TurboTax. So you need to scroll forward to get to where you left off.
It seems like a competent tax program but after being used to TurboTax I may take advantage of TaxCut's 100% money-back guarantee and get TurboTax again.
Rating:
Summary: Ease + Value = Best Tax Software Available
Review: H&R Block's TaxCut software is easy to use, and a big value for your buck. Once you include the cost of electronic filing and software for your state tax return, plus the short time it takes to get your refund, it's paid for itself. Particularly if you don't have a lot of complicated financial matters, this software is great, although it does make handling investments and deductions rather simple. Better than TurboTax, because it's less complicated, I'd recommend picking this up in January. Get your refund now!
Rating: 
Summary: The End
Review: I have no idea how this program works. It will not download. Went back and it said it had downloaded and would not let me try again.
Rating:
Summary: Easier than doing it on paper...
Review: I disagree with the users who say that the software is not user-friendly. We popped in the CD and away we go... Our taxes were done in about five hours. (My husband is super meticulous otherwise we might have been done sooner.) We've used Tax Cut every year for the past three years, and it's always been a big help. One of the really nice features is that Tax Cut saves your information (social security number, address, names, birthdates, etc.) so that each year it is a bit easier to do your taxes, especially if typing is not your thing. + Fast, easy to use + It RED FLAGS anything that the IRS might question -- this offers you a great opportunity to review what you've typed before sending + You can download new laws or tax cuts before you submit -- the laws are always changing so this is especially nice if you want to search for added deductions you might be missing + Usually comes with a rebate to do your state taxes, too + The little explanation videos are crisp and clear (except for the English usage, see below) The only drawback that I can think of is that the language of the "Help" portion of the CD is meant for people who consider themselves masters of the English language. I'm a former ESL teacher, and I can just imagine some of my students pulling their hair out or turning to Webster's every sixty seconds. So this may not be a great investment for an ESL'er. I'd suggest going to an accountant or allowing yourself A LOT of time to digest the language.
Rating:
Summary: It works for me
Review: I'm always hesitant to write these reviews on products I don't like. Not that the reviews aren't worthwhile - I'm just fairly unmotivated when it comes to this sort of thing. But TaxCut was such a dismal piece of software that I just had to tell other interested folks about my experience. I purchased TaxCut because I wanted to "take a stand" on the TurboTax locked-license issue (read the TT reviews for more info). After this experience, though, I am *very* glad that the Quicken folks have stated they won't lock next year's TT! Otherwise, I would've had to resorted to doing my taxes by hand. For me, TaxCut was that bad - I would've saved more time and frustration by doing my taxes by hand. I used TaxCut for both my wife's and my individual taxes (we filed separately). We filed both Federal and California taxes. My wife worked for a company for the entire year, and I worked for a small company for about ¾ of the year, and then contracted for ¼ of year. My wife and I are both computer folk--I'm a Windows software engineer, and she's an NT/Unix SysAdmin--so we know our way around computers & software. Regardless, TaxCut caused me all sorts of grief. Here's a list of the problems I ran into whilst using TaxCut: - Though I have a full-time broadband connection, TaxCut couldn't find the network. This meant that I couldn't do online updates (I had to download & install them manually) *and* I couldn't file my taxes online (hence I couldn't take advantage of TaxCut's online-filing rebate). TaxCut's technical support was worthless at helping me solve this problem - though admittedly I didn't spend too much time working on this problem, and just resigned myself to paper-filing. - The software reported incorrect results for my wife's California return! It was reporting that her refund was going to be every penny she paid in state taxes (~$6K), rather than owing $133, which turned out to be her real state tax liability. Oddly, though, when I reviewed her internally-generated state tax form (using the "view Form" feature), it showed the correct (owe $133) value - somehow TaxCut's left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing! This was problematic, because even though the form was correct, the "interview" wizard still acted as though I was going to get a refund - and I have no idea what sort of deduction it was using for the federal taxes. After banging my head against this problem solo for quite a while, then going round-and-round with TaxCut's horrible tech support folks (they were utterly worthless), I finally started over w/ my wife's taxes - this time, it got it right. (Note: I *believe* the problem had something to do with me initially telling TaxCut that my wife was not a resident of California - though after seeing and fixing this problem and then reviewing all the interview questions & answers multiple times, TaxCut still couldn't figure it out.) - While I find TurboTax's interview process to be fairly "engaging" and helpful, I found TaxCut's interview to be little more than original IRS instructions. If TurboTax was the computer simulation of your helpful tax accountant, then TaxCut is a simulation of an IRS government worker: not very helpful, clear, or informative. - "Help" is not context-sensitive. Clicking on "Help" just shows you the Help table-of-contents. TaxCut sometimes has some context-related FAQs for an interview question, but I find that there's not nearly enough when your taxes are at all tricky. The online help is really not too much more than the IRS & state tax publications. - Quite a few times TaxCut's interview process couldn't handle my particular tax situation, and forced me to pop its electronic version of an IRS form or worksheet, and had me fill it in by hand. This was particularly true for self-employment-related issues: for this stuff, TaxCut really wasn't too much more than an electronic 1040 worksheet with a built-in calculator. - I owed the government a penalty for not paying estimated taxes. After answering the interview questions, TaxCut calculated the penalty at ~$500. I then went back and answered the questions slightly differently (but still accurately: I just answered the, "Would you like to use this method to calculate X?" questions a bit differently), and it got the penalty down to ~$68! This is the type of thing that I could usually trust TurboTax to do for me: calculate something via the two different ways, and give me the better of the two results. (If nothing else, TT usually asks better questions that more readily guide me to the best responses). - One annoyance that kinda sums up my entire TaxCut experience: when I got to the California state interview, one of the first questions was "will you be attaching your federal tax form to your California tax form?" Jeez, I don't know! By clicking on the FAQ, it tells me that I will need to include the federal form if I'll be sending in anything other than a 1040, and few Schedules it lists. Hmm....Doesn't TaxCut know what forms I'm sending?! I surely didn't know - it wasn't until *after* doing the state interview that you actually print your federal forms for mailing, and I couldn't figure out any easy way of discovering this information. - TaxCut doesn't calculate 2003 tax estimates and print out the quarterly payment vouchers. This very much surprised me: though I've never had to pay estimated taxes until this year, I always found TurboTax to be very pro-active and fully-features w/rt estimated taxes. All-in-all, while TurboTax for me is much more of a "full tax solution", TaxCut is just more of a "helper app". If you use TaxCut and your taxes are at all out of the norm, expect to be reading over IRS publications and filling out the forms pretty-much by hand.
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