Turbo Tax

Having royally screwed up this years federal income tax situation (got an extension), I now am thinking of purchasing the Turbo Tax package. Has anyone used it, and if so, can you recommend it?

I have done mine and my fathers taxes with it for years. You just have to follow it step by step. Having all your paperwork organized before you start is the key.

golddog, turbo tax has a web site that you can do your taxes on line. There is a fee involved, but using the online version and paying the fee, you will always have an updated version for use,. without having to buy it.

Go to the irs website, and look at the free file companies listed. I did my DMIL's there, and it was very easy.

I would recommend TurboTax over TaxCut any day.

Having been a tax preparer for many years, I will not use Turbo Tax. I enjoy and use every year TaxCut. (I think it's cheaper too) TaxCut is made by H & R Block.

Thank you for the good advice.

Chuckle. I should have qualified my recommendation by explaining that DH is a financial comptroller for a large company (CPA and former IT manager with a lot of hands-on systems experience.) He prepares ours and several family members' taxes each year...but he's not a tax accountant or tax preparer by trade.

He dog-cussed TaxCut every step of the way (we have found it has some quirks that are not user-friendly to work around.) But it IS cheaper. However, he swore after this last go-round that he'd never buy it again, no matter the price difference.

So - like anything else in life - everybody's got their own preference. You might try the cheaper one first; if it doesn't work, don't get discouraged and give up on the software altogether - just try a different software package the next time.

Dear Golddog,
We have our insurance with State Farm and Turbo Tax did our taxes and our daughters taxes for free. The only one we couldn't file was the city. We had to register with the State Farm website and then with the Turbo tax site, but that wasn't that big of a deal. We had our state refund in about 5 days auto deposited and paid our federal online. Didn't even have to send anything in, they used our signatures from last year! It was so fast! Of course like I said this was for State Farm policy holders. I sure hope they off it next year.

I have been using Turbo Tax for the past 5 years, normally purchasing the disc. The past 2 tax years I did the online thing without a disk.

Last year, it worked like a charm. This year however, it seems intuit is trying to scrape fees up. They led me down the primrose path of filing a tax return for Florida for intangibles. Well I knew Florida doesn't do a state tax but, wasn't sure if something changed. At the end, turbo tax says "Florida doesn't want you to file a tax return" and yet Turbo Tax wanted to charge me an extra 20 for going through it. I went back and delete all State info and it deleted the fee they wanted me to pay.

Although this isn't the first time I have found intuit doing an end run to collect fees or sell a product, I knew of no other service for my taxes. So I have to be aware to do an end run around intuit to outsmart them for fees.

Molly

We like TaxCut. We tried TurboTax a few years ago and my DH ended up returning it (after a lot of muttering and banging on things LOL) and going back to TaxCut. But, like Terry said, it probably depends on the personality and preferences of the person using it. :-)

I let my son do mine last year and he used Turbo Tax. When I went this year to buy the soft ware they were out and I ended up buying Tax Cut. The thing that I didn't like with Tax Cut is trying to go back and look at the results. It is like finding a needle in a haystack for me.
I will be using the Turbo Tax on line next year.

My wife has been doing ours for the last few years with TurboTax online. Refunds are done electronically so are deposited in couple of days. State taxes are done as well. We switched after our accountant kept going up on the bill each year - the last one was $350.

The one thing about Turbo Tax online is you have an option of getting part of your return in gift certificates (just a handful of stores are participating now but hopefully a lot more in the future). There was a limit of $1000 though but you get $1200 in gift cards for $1000 refund. It's like getting $200 free if you are happy with the stores that are participating. We got $1000 in Lowes with the other $200 in Starbucks and Borders if I remember right.