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TaxCut 2002 State Edition

TaxCut 2002 State Edition

List Price: $24.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Program fine, installation stinks
Review: After installing Taxcut Platinum for Home and Business on my "D:" drive and spending 2 hours downloading the updates and getting started on doing the taxes, I attempted to install the Taxcut State edition. However it only installs to the C: drive.

Imagine a billion dollar company which forces you to install its products on only the C: drive. Small bug? Slight programming problem? So now to get it to work, I have to reinstall the whole thing (TaxCut for home and Business) on my C: drive and download the updates again, where I don't have room (that's why I have D, E, F,... drives). Another evening of installing and downloading spent because of the programming weirdness of Tax Cut. Last year and the year before I had to get them to send me new CD's because the ones they sent me had R/W errors on them, and were unusable.

I called their help desk and they didn't see anything odd about their unique installation - forcing the user to install to the C: drive.

Thank God, there's some competition for these guys or this program would be a lot worse.

Once you get it installed, it seems to work fine. In fact I love the program. So I give it a "5" for being great program, but a "1" for the annual installation problems.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: EXTRA FEE FOR STATES
Review: Be very careful when ordering this software..It does not prompt you for "your" state..however if you look very very very closely at the picture you maybe can determine if your state is included..If not in sooo very small print it states that for an added fee you can purchase your state seperately!!!!!!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: False errors prevented me from filing electronically
Review: I found both the federal and state versions of TaxCut to be inferior to TurboTax. The worst part that due to some "errors" (which were not errors at all) I was unable to file electronically.

I would have felt much more confident filing my return if I had gone with TurboTax.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: TaxCut is very user unfriendly
Review: I had lots of problems with this software. The most user unfriendly software I have ever used. There were lots of forms that were not updated and need to be downloaded from the web. I would not buy this software again.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Waste of time and $$
Review: I had no trouble with the Federal version of TaxCut but the State version is useless. I initially tried to download the software from the TaxCut Web site. I kept getting messages to try later. I spoke with one of their technical support people only to be told she was getting the same message as I was. She told me to try later.

Then I bought the software locally and installed it, only to get to the point where I'm told to download the latest version of my state's forms and programs. That didn't work. So I e-mailed tech support and they gave me a download link. It took over an hour to download everything and the program still doesn't work. I can't get past the window that tells me to download the latest update.

I give up. I'll never use TaxCut again.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Sorry, you cant use this if you have been in state < 1 year
Review: I had to pay cash for my State Tax (Arkansas) so when I read that the program would not apply if I lived in the state for less than than one year I was... I paid [$$] to be told "Sorry you must use manual forms from your state"! How do you find this out?
Load the Taxcut Federal Program, compute your tax. Load the state program and it computes your state tax with the "Sorry" caveat.
If you have moved in the past year, don"t buy this program. If you pay nothing for it- you get what you pay for.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I wouldn't do my taxes without TaxCut!
Review: I have always been comfortable in filling out and filing my own tax forms, but in recent years, when I was making changes in where my mutual funds were invested, the forms required by both federal and state governments proved daunting. Using TaxCut State made things much easier. I have used TaxCut Federal for several years now and started with TaxCut State last year and it has been a wonderful! No need to run to the post office or other government building to get the forms. One word of caution though: the cost of the program is free after rebate when you purchase TaxCut Federal Deluxe or Platinum versions, and for one state only.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: BE CAREFUL - TaxCut for Delaware was full of errors!!!
Review: I think it's shameful that H&R Block is selling a product that can easily create an inaccurate return for someone who trusts the software. The following is from my letter of complaint to them:

"I suspect your software creates inaccurate returns for many, if not most, Delawareans unless they are careful and override your defaults. Below I've listed the major problems that I encountered:

a. Your software automatically assumed "joint" filing, whereas the Delaware instructions make it very clear that when each spouse's income exceeds $9400, married couples in Delaware are generally better off to file using the status "Married & Filing Combined Separate."

b. Once I did override the "Joint" filing status (I had to read the Delaware instructions carefully to learn that we would be better off to do that), I couldn't figure out why your software calculated higher taxes using "Married & Filing Combined Separate" than under "Joint" filing. Eventually I realized that when I overrode the "Joint" filing to go to "Married and Filing Combined Separate," your software automatically switched from using itemized deductions to using standard deductions.

c. Necessary adjustments to the federal AGI were not made. When I completed our federal return with TaxCut, I included information on muni fund dividends that are taxable by my state (though not the federal government). I also noted that some of the income was "interest on U.S. obligations" that should not have been taxed by Delaware (though they are taxed by the federal government). Each of these should have been entered as "modifications to federal AGI" on the Delaware form and were not. In fact, when I entered the appropriate dollar amounts in the "spouse" column (Column A) of the Modification to Federal AGI form, your software automatically - and incorrectly - entered a negative dollar amount in the "you" column (Column B) so that the amounts would total to zero. I had to then override the spouse column.

d. When I overrode the default so that itemized deductions would be used, the deductions should have been allocated between the two spouses in proportion to their incomes. Your software merely put all itemized deductions under the "you" column, none were allocated to the "spouse." I had to calculate and enter the allocation manually for each deduction.

e. Your software designates Delaware as one of the states that "do not permit e-filing." Perhaps your software doesn't support e-filing in Delaware, but to say that Delaware does not permit it is untrue. I e-filed our Delaware return last year with TurboTax and the 2002 Delaware instructions clearly encourage it (you can read this in the complete set of Delaware instructions that you provide in lieu of any real help menu to support this state's software).

f. Your "interview" for Delaware consisted of one screen after another saying "Complete this form if necessary." Short of browsing the entire (unindexed) set of state instructions, users were given no guidance to help in deciding whether they needed to complete the forms or how to do so. Many of the forms were clearly inappropriate given the information entered for the federal return; for example, your interview should not have asked us about completing the Delaware form for people who are over 60 or disabled. Even the state software didn't "talk" to itself - while showing that I was owed a Delaware refund, your "interview" stated that if I owe more than $400 I should calculate the penalty.

In addition to purchasing your Delaware state software, I purchased your New York software so that we could file 2002 taxes for a recently deceased relative from that state. Your New York software carried over information from the federal return to the state return very appropriately. The New York interview mode asked pertinent questions and provided relevant help regarding terminology and nuances.

In contrast, your Delaware product is shameful. I imagine that many Delawareans' tax returns were calculated incorrectly by your software. As a business professor, the greatest utility of your product to me is as a scenario for discussions of business ethics.

Your software's "help" offering for completing the Delaware return was merely the complete set of state instructions, which I selected from a menu of states that all seem to have low populations (Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, etc.). I can only assume that your firm has chosen to sell poorly-developed software to residents of all of these low-population states."

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Did what I needed it to do
Review: I thought this product did a workman-like job of doing what I needed it to do. I liked that it interfaced well with the Federal version.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Did what I needed it to do
Review: I thought this product did a workman-like job of doing what I needed it to do. I liked that it interfaced well with the Federal version.


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