Posted: 1/29/2010 4:57:10 PM EDT
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I do my own taxes... Who makes the best software out there? Who makes the easiest to use while maximizing my return without breaking any laws or even bending them. Suggestions? |
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Got the physical version at Costco for something like $50. This also did state taxes. There are a series of versions for more complex finances, such as rental income, capital gains, etc. Most people can get by fine with the lowest or second lowest versions, but pay attention to the feature list on the box.
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TurboTax
They all suck to a degree but I've never paid anyone to do my taxes since 1986. The H&R Block "TaxCut" software missed a bunch of deductions when I used it in 1992. That was when I had a lot of self-employment income, partnership income and expenses, etc. I only noticed by comparing my TurboTax refund from the prior year... plus they said I owed thousands of dollars, unpossible since I lost money that year. Blew my faith in them. |
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TT has gotten too expensive for my tastes and I don't qualify for free file.
I used TaxACT this year with great results and it's much cheaper than TT and all *Made in the USA*... 
eta: I did them online and imported my personal info from TT without a hitch. http://www.taxact.com/ |
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Quoted:
TT has gotten too expensive for my tastes and I don't qualify for free file. I used TaxACT this year with great results and it's much cheaper than TT and all *Made in the USA*...
eta: I did them online and imported my personal info from TT without a hitch. http://www.taxact.com/ I've been using Taxact.com for years. Easy to use and only $10 to prepare taxes and e-file. |
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I always used TurboTax. But over the years, it got more in your face trying to force you into using their "for money" services, and making like living hell continually having to read every small detail before clicking on a button to make certain you were not going to get sidelined into signing up for some crap. They also have the most perverted printer system which would invariably fail to work with any of my printers.
Then they added their DRM crap, which they silently installed on your computer, and provided no means of removing it. At that point, I moved to TaxCut (Now H&R Block at home). It has been pretty good until this year. I used the free "DeductionPro" to list and value my donations - worked ok. Then I tried to import the result into the tax program –– it crashed. it crashed every time I tried. So I called H&R Block support. Now I have to say that the person I spoke with was very helpful - as far as she could help, but since there was nothing in their bug database about this she could do nothing but refer to her supervisor. This moron said that DeductionsPro was corrupt, needed to be removed and re-installed, then try again. She was about to let me go, but I said I had uninstalled, and the re-install was almost compete –– lets just try this. Crashed as expected. Back to the supervisor. He then came back wanting to play with msconfig, and essentially bring the system up in single user mode. No. Pushing him to explain the logic here it boiled down to him having googles the error message (a standard runtime message from Visual C++) and found a totally unrelated problem with MS Word, in which the MS answer was to go single-user and install again. That was a specific MS Word issue, nothing to do with my tax program. Insited they go to second line support. About 30 minutes later, second line support apparently had googled lots of MS pages on this same message. Most didn't have real answers, the only one that did was the Word install issue, so they insisted I try that. I was not about to waste my time on that .. so terminated the call. Checked the DeductionsPro "database" –– its just an XML file. It looked ok. Eventually, I found the problem. I had typed a date (2/8/2009) as 28//2009. DeductionsPro hadn't caught this. The tax program tried to use the data and ended up with a null pointer. Two programs, neither validating input ... not good. I may go back to TurboTax next year, but its probably no better in reality. Probably bioth developed by $3.75/hr Indian programmers. |
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I used H & R Block Tax Cut the last few years and using it now. Works fine. Especially like the "New Gun Purchase Planner" they came up with. You select the basic firearm, and the program adds mods as you get more refunded. I'm up to a CrossOps Mega Monolith build, minus the Trijicon presently. With some more student deductions I should have that too.  |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
TT has gotten too expensive for my tastes and I don't qualify for free file. I used TaxACT this year with great results and it's much cheaper than TT and all *Made in the USA*...
eta: I did them online and imported my personal info from TT without a hitch. http://www.taxact.com/ I've been using Taxact.com for years. Easy to use and only $10 to prepare taxes and e-file. Would I be able to import my previous tax filings from H7R Block over to TaxAct? |
| Freetaxusa.com used it for the last five years, no software to buy, free filing. |