Time to start on the taxes again and I'm trying to decide between these two products. I did alot of stock trading again last year, so I'll want as much support in that area, plus for the first time I plan on tackling deductions. TurboTax has a few different packages, plus a package called It'sDeductible which guarantee's $300 in tax savings, but it costs an extra $20. Last year I did my taxes through HR Block's website, but I don't think they helped me very much, but their packages seem less expensive. Of course I'd like to keep this as inexpensive as possible. Any suggestions or advice?
For $7.95, check out www.taxactonline.com. .Extremely user friendly. Ive used them the last 3 years in a row with no problems. Got my refund in a few days. As far as deductions, they ask a series of questions to help determine your deductions.
just a FYI but if you make less than 30k, there are many many free tax services online where you prepare and file for free online www.irs.gov has a list of them
I have my own business, and although my wife is a tax attorney, she concentrates on multinational corporate issues. Therefore, I end up doing our taxes. I've used both of them, and my preference is TaxCut. To be honest, there isn't a whole lot of difference between the two, but I give a slight edge to TaxCut....the fact that it's cheaper makes the decision a no-brainer. I was looking at both of them at Amazon.com the other day, and I was shocked to see how low TaxCut scored amongst user ratings.....but then I saw Turbo Tax, and it scored even lower. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that some people do their taxes REAL early before all the tax updates are incorporated into the software updates.
I use TaxCut. Turbo Tax had all kinds of issues with their copy protection/activation routine last year. If you also use MS Money and want to import data from Money, I don't believe TurboTax supports importing from MS Money (if that's important to you). BTW, the IRS has a free online tax filing program. I don't know anything about it : http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=118986,00.html
Me too. I upgrade to the deluxe $9.95 because it carries over information from the previous year. If it is your first time, I would not upgrade.
I actually use TurboTax, because my wife has a small business and I've always used it...Tax Cut is cheaper, which I may try next year, but I was too lazy to start from scratch as I have some stock losses and stuff...
In TurboTax, in the 'tax preparation' area, you can actually deduct the cost of the Turbotax software. I would think the other software packages would have something similar. -- droxford
TaxCut allows the same thing, however, it is hard to get the deduction unless you have a number of unreimbursed work related expenses to claim as well. If you just have Tax preparation fees to claim then they have to be greater than 2% of your adjusted gross income. In other words, if your tax preparation software costs $25.00, your AGI has to be LESS than $1250.00 in order to realize a deduction. If your AGI is less than $1250 then you probably don't need tax preparation software.
I've been using TaxAct Deluxe for the last 3yrs. It's awesome and it's only $9.95 plus it comes with a free E-filing. It's a full blown software like TurboTax with all of the advice. The best part is that it remembers all of your info from last year. That's the only reason I would use it over the web based version.
