Rating: 
Summary: TaxCut or TurboTax?
Review: I've used TurboTax (and before that, MacinTax) to do my taxes on my Mac since 1999. There has always been some reason why I wanted to use TT instead of TaxCut -- a Quicken rebate, non-availability of the retail boxed TaxCut, fear of the unknown, whatever. Well, this year, I decided to save myself some money and try TaxCut, and I have no real complaints about it. In fact, I think it offers a much better value than TT. (I'm running OS X 10.2 Jaguar.)As you probably already know, it imported my tax data from last year's TT data file just fine. After that, everything went very smoothly. I have many Schedule A deductions, stock options and other Schedule D items, so although my return is not super-simple, it probably lands on the easy end of the spectrum. I'm not real picky when it comes to the user interface -- I think TT and TC are probably on equal footing there. TC does make it a bit easier to switch back and forth between federal and state returns. I also prefer TC's method of getting directly to the tax forms themselves, although a strange limitation in TC is that you can only have one form open on the screen at one time. An easy workaround for this is to print preview any forms that you want to see simultaneously. I couldn't see how to download/import my W-2 info from within TaxCut. I did this last year with TT, and it worked great. The documentation gives vague instructions implying that you should be able to do this. Not really a big deal, I just entered the info manually. Another minor gripe is that the help documentation opens in IE instead of my preferred browser, Safari. I'm not sure what happens if you don't have IE installed on your system! TT 2002 had problems with printing and perpetually wanting to update itself, so neither program is perfect. But considering the price, I'll definitely be using TC again next year! A few footnotes:
1) In case anyone is going to buy TT because they can get a Quicken rebate with it, I would try examining alternatives to Quicken. There are much better (and cheaper) programs out there. I have been using an app called Budget (from Snowmint Creative Solutions) for over a year, and it works *much* better for me than Quicken ever did. Gnucash is also supposed to be very good, and it's free.
2) Ignore the review below titled "Pretty much dummy proof." As evidenced by the references to MS Money etc., he's referring to the Windoze version of TC.
3) As others have noted, the spyware in TT 2002 never was part of the Mac program. Just wanted to state the facts correctly.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty much dummy proof
Review: If you have stocks or use MS Money you definitely want this software. It works with HR Block's Deduction Pro software as well. It takes you step-by-step through the process. Unlike a couple other reviewers we did not lose any data or suffer any other problems. It even allows you to download W-2 forms from some businesses if you are lucky enough to work for a company that has it available electronically. We used TurboTax last year and we found it confusing and expensive. We are much happier with TaxCut and we plan to use it again next year. The bottom line is you need to use whatever interfaces with the software you are managing your budget with during the year. We use MS Money, and TaxCut worked very well with it. We couldn't pass up all the rebates, free software, and discounts. Be sure to realize all the negative votes to my review are tax accountants that hate losing the business to software. So taken in that respect look at them as positve votes. At those positive votes are people that know how well the software works. In other words no matter what votes I get it means I did a good review. ; )
Rating: 
Summary: Mac OS 9.2 or better required
Review: The system requirements for the 2003 premium version I received says it requires Mac OS 9.2 or greater and the installer does not recognize OS 8.x.
Rating: 
Summary: Errors in the software
Review: The taxcut state version showed up. Too bad it has errors in it. In Virginia, the 529 plan is limited to a $2000 deductible per account. Would have been nice if the program has known that. I am scared to submit my taxes using this software without checking them by hand. If I have to check them by hand, I would have done them that way. Oh well, back to TurboTax and its macintosh tax. At least I never worried that my taxes were done incorrectly using that software.
Rating: 
Summary: Warning for Mac Users
Review: This is a very easy program to use, but my filing has been held up because they have not updated one of the forms necessary for real estate income. They said it would be ready in mid-February, but now customer support says they do not know when it will be ready for the Mac. I don't know how many other forms they are missing, so Turbotax may be a better buy even though it is overpriced for the Mac.
Rating:
Summary: Switched from TurboTax
Review: This year I switched from the windoZe TurboTax. I thought I'd try the Mac version, but didn't want to pay the Turbo-(Macintosh)"tax" (+$10 for Mac users) so am trying TaxCut. So far so good. TaxCut imported the (windoZe) TurboTax data fine and all the previous year's data shows up nicely. It has a nice summary task/forms list that shows you which data/forms are (which are done, which are in progress etc). I tend to use that rather than the interview process since I get various data/statements at different times and just jump around as I get to them rather than have all my statements ready for an "interview". Unfortuately it doesn't look like you can buy the State version from Amazon (or other store), so I'll probably have to buy/download it from the TaxCut website.
Rating:
Summary: First year with TaxCut - various quirks/bugs
Review: This year I tried Taxcut on the Mac instead of Turbotax on a PC
(which I've been doing for 4+ years). Taxcut was only so-so.
Printing to pdf's (a feature built into Mac OS X) isn't that great with about 2 duplicating lines between page breaks (2 lines at the bottom of one page duplicate onto the top of the next page; and the page break isn't that clean). Turbotax (last year) on the PC had an option to print to pdf's (which I do for archival and burn to a CDROM; don't generally print the 50+ pages of my return) and that was always perfect. Everything was formatted perfectly, and with "bookmarks" (no bookmarks in Taxcut, but that's probably because it doesn't print to pdf's directly). Turbotax also included printing all the final electronic filing status pages with DCNs, etc. Taxcut doesn't have any of that. Also I had various problems entering lots (12-30 stocks) sometimes getting duplicate entries (workaround, delete everything from the first duplicate to the end and reenter). I reported these problems but HR Block just said they don't support doing pdf's and didn't offer much on the capital gain entries (poor print formatting is a nuisance, but messing up the capital gain listing is a major problem and can be time consuming to double-check everything). I'll probably try Turbotax on the Mac next year (not sure I want to buy Taxcut next year to see if they've fixed any of these things and put up with more nuisances and major glitches). I prepare at least 3 returns each year with these products and am truly disappointed with Taxcut 2003 "Premium" for Mac.
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