Tax Software: Taxcut v.s. TurboTax
I’ve got taxes to do, and I’m not exactly sure what the difference is between H&R’s Taxcut and Intuit’s Turbotax. As far as I can tell, they’re both roughly the same price, and allow you to electronically turn in your 2006 federal and state income taxes:
The confusion becomes worse when you realize that there are a number of “free filing” sites, as well:
- Tax ACT: Your totally FREE tax software
- eSmart Tax: Online tax filing software
All of this is confused by the large numbers of SEO spammers cluttering up search results in Google. I’ve done taxes before, but tax software should exist to make my life easier, not more difficult. Buying tax software should be like buying an operating system. Clearly, buying Vista is a bad idea. Buying Taxcut? We can’t be so sure.
| This entry was posted on Saturday, February 3rd, 2007 at 8:50 pm and is tagged with free tax software, state income taxes, google, tax filing, intuit, bad idea, large numbers, taxcut, confusion, operating system, cluttering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
TaxCut (H&R Block software) has a major bust. Allows you to enter mileage for standard mileage deduction for business use of car, BUT it does not carry forward the deduction to Schedule C!
I reported this, and Customer Service couldn’t have cared less. Since I’m an accountant (read anal-retentive), I discovered the error and manually corrected it on my return, but some folks might not be so diligent and would consequently pay higher Self-Employemnt tax (Social Security) and higher income taxes. Would not recommend.
You can compare Tax cut and Turbotax or compare among their versions at http://www.coolcheapest.com/Business_Productivity/2126–Intuit_TurboTax_Basic_2008.aspx.
I just went to citizentax,com and it says Your Federal Return is only $17.76 and your State Return is only $12.88. Wonder what’s up with that????
Interesting article. However, I would like have seen something about a company called Citizen Tax. I have used them the last couple of years and have had no problems. They offer federal and state return combined for only $9.99. That is for all their forms too, no fee increases for certain forms like some of these other sites. If you are interested in an easy tax filing this season I would defenitely check them out. I highly recommend http://citizentax.com
Taxcut is much much cheaper than Turbotax. Turbo outdated software to calculated your tax, so the result can jump up and down if your don’t know how to refresh the software. The last time I use it was 2006, and I lost 90 dollars due to this software stupid behavior. Taxcut is cheaper, but it does not give you good interview like Turbo. Still Taxcut does not change its result everyday you try to fill in the same infomation. This is my Taxcut 2007!
Honestly, I couldn’t tell you the difference between the two either, but I just filed my taxes for the first time by myself this year (parents used to do them for me). I checked out a bunch of different sites and ended up going with TaxBrain because I have a Mac and because it was FREE. If you check out this site:
http://www.shop-taxbrain.com/compare_basic.html
You can buy TaxBrain, but then there is a mail-in rebate for the same cost as the product. I filed last week and got my return in my checking account this morning. It is totally confusing to try and decide which one to use, so I just chose the one that was free