Customer Reviews

H&R Block TaxCut 2007 Home & Business + State + e-file [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Very good product for the "normal" tax payer. Schedule C info is very good but some of the intricacies of LLC and S-Corp fillings are a bit harder to understand and the questions are not as clear as they should be.

Bottom line, if you own a home and you have mortgage and/or a sole propitiership, this is top notch 5 stars. If you recently formed an LLC and are looking towards this product I would strongly recommend you speak to a tax professional ( A CPA not one of the chain stores) instead.

I bought Tax Cut Home and Business because it had the proper forms for my LLC, unlike Turbo Tax. Plus, the cost was much cheaper than Turbo Tax. However, what they don't tell you is that as often as not, when looking for information, it will direct the user to the government instructions on how to fill out the answer to their questions. Plus, when doing a search, it does not search on key words, only on forms. I did an error check, and it had two of the same errors (on two K-1 forms for two different members of the LLC) and it allowed me to change the value on both as it directed me to, but it did not recognize one of the changes, even though it was the same form for two different people. Lastly, it doesn't automatically import data from the forms you fill out on the business software to your personal return. Unless I'm mistaken, you need to print it out, then manually put the values in the right places. This software is not dumbed down like Turbo Tax - if you know your way around IRS tax forms for business, this software is for you. But then, if you know your way around the IRS forms, you don't need the software.

Right now, I'm thinking about going back to Turbo Tax next year.

This review is in reference to the 1041 and related forms. Instead of buying this program just use the forms on the IRS website, because Taxcut's help menu will send you there anyway. The "walk through interview" is a joke. Navigating thru the forms is very cumbersome and heaven forbid if you incorrectly enter anything and try to correct it. I talked to someone at H&R Select and they informed me that the program assumes you have a certain level of knowledge to use the program (like your Masters in accounting?). They also informed me they do not use the program. So I thought I would be generous and give it a one star rating.

I bought this because I needed help filing my first year of an S-Corp business; however, when I got to the State return, I had to select which forms applied to me. That is something I wasn't prepared for, as I thought that's why I had bought the program. Others may already be clear on this, but for anyone who is hoping this is the do-it-all program, not so much luck. :)

I've used H&R Block's TaxCut for a number of years, since TurboTax began installing spyware in its software, and I have found the product consistently easy to use and basically worthwhile with a couple of exceptions.

The program generally works well on material that it covers with some exceptions. However, as other reviewers have stated, if you have any type of special circumstances to your return, especially in the state returns, then you better know how to prepare the return data yourself, because TaxCut will not do it for you. The biggest areas of shortfall are in state return preparation where TaxCut simply has you fill out the forms with little or no guidance.

This year I found myself in an unusual situation, I bought a car, a Prius, so I have state and federal tax credits available to me. TaxCut handled the federal credit fairly well. the exception being that after having asked me the date I purchased the car (rather placed it in service) it then defaulted to the wrong period in a later screen related to the time frame in which I purchased the car, which had I not correct TaxCut's default selection, I would have lost half of my Federal Tax Credit. I don't know how the state calculation faired, since at the date of review, TaxCut has still not published the Colorado State Tax program.

Also, because of the purchase of the car, I opted to deduct the sales tax I paid rather than state income taxes as part of my federal return. Tax Cut asked for and properly identified the amount of my state sales taxes, then asked for my county, which was available in my case, but was not in many others, and then asked me to fill in my locality (city) tax rate. The implication being that TaxCut had dealt with the other sales taxes, i.e. county, and in our case RDT regional taxes. I filled in our city tax rate and moved on. TaxCut then warned me that the amount of my city tax rate was likely wrong, because it was higher than my state sales rate. Not only was the rate not wrong, and TaxCut would have known that had they simply inserted a test that compared my rate to a range of actual rates within my county rather than the simple test to compare it to the state tax rate. But it also computed my estimated sales tax deduction incorrectly. This is because it failed to include my county tax rate, which it specifically asked for, and the regional RTD tax, which is applied to counties in the area, including mine.

The Bottom line is that while the basics are there for your tax preparation; don't count on TaxCut to properly handle any special circumstances correctly. Research the information yourself or go to a tax preparer. By the way, I am a CPA, but DO NOT do tax return work, nor am I affiliated with a firm that does, so this recommendation is not based on me trying to get work for my firm.

I've been using TC for about 15 years. During this time my returns have become increasingly complex as my business has expanded (sole proprietorships, office buildings) and my personal situation has changed (elderly parents needing assistance, children in/out of college/jobs). TC has been able to handle most of this, but this year I ran into some serious problems. Here they are:

1. It's always difficult to coax TC into calculating Fed estimated taxes for the new tax year. This problem continues.

2. Whenever hypertext or help is selected, the program responds with a script error. The help screen can be accessed, but the script error message must first be cleared. This becomes increasingly annoying as the return is prepared, but not fatal.

3. The worst problem this year involved making and editing itemized lists. I use this feature a lot so that the next tax year it can guide my entries based on the previous year. This way I don't have to re-study the help screens to decide whether this or that item is considered an 'office supply' or 'misc expense'; whether an item should be put on Sched E as a rental expense or on Sched C as a business expense, etc. I had finished about 75% of my Fed return and suddenly TC would crash whenever I tried to edit or modify an existing itemized list. I went back and tried to edit a number of lists, but couldn't view the lists and TC crashed and closed each time.

I contacted HRBlock via chat to determine how to fix this. After the usual waiting..........explaining...............I was told that this problem was not new and that the fix was simple. All I had to do was discard the 07 return, go back to the 06 return and delete-item by item- all of the itemized lists in that return, re-import the 06 return to the 07 return, and then just re-enter all of the data into the new 07 return........... DISCARD WHAT NOW? GO BACK WHERE NOW? This is an ENTIRELY UNSATISFACTORY solution, I said. Re-creating the 07 return would take days, what other solutions are there? None!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I checked over and printed out the 07 return and found that the lists were still intact (but inaccessible to editing) and that the calculations based on the lists were correct. So I just completed the return workng around the list editing problem.

This is an awful problem. I don't know what will happen when I try to import this 07 return into the 08 return next year. Will the lists be there or not, will the numbers import properly or not, what will happen?

As a result, I'm seriously considering TurboTax.

Bought this to do income tax returns to settle an Estate in PA. I easily entered all the info for filing a final joint return, and got through the Federal e-file verification. As I went through the PA e-file verification I got a message that PA does not permit joint returns when one of the parties is deceased ... but then the astonishing remainder of the of the messages ... you have to go back and create separate individual federal returns (but not file them) to use to create the separate PA returns!! It didn't tell me this until AFTER I went through the PA interview! I can't e-file the Federal & PA returns together... so far I haven't figured how to e-file the PA returns because you have to e-file the corresponding e-filed Federal return, but there isn't one. Tried the free TurboTax to see if it could get me around this... couldn't import the 2007 TaxCut data, only 2006. Tried a simulated TurboTax joint Federal with deceased ... the PA gave an upfront warning of the need to file separate PA returns and imported the Federal and allowed creation of a single for the primary filer only (couldn't create the deceased spouse PA forms) ... TurboTax pulled in all of the income and didn't exclude the spouse-only items; there is no easy/obvious way to exclude those items. Tried the free TaxAct and it appears it can't do it right either. So none of these handle PA well for this situation, although TurboTax appears to be a little closer to getting it right.

I bought this TaxCut bundled s/w to also do the Estate 1041 return. It's no where near as helpful as the 1040 interview. It assumes you're familiar with doing a 1041. I had to do much research outside of this s/w to figure out how to properly report things.

TaxAct doesn't offer s/w with the Estate 1041 forms, so I narrowed my choices to TaxCut or TurboTax. Neither of them import TaxAct data, so I had to cut/paste from last year's TaxAct 1040 info. I picked TaxCut over TurboTax simply because of total cost to do 1040 & 1041 forms. By the way, the 1041 is done with the business tax s/w while the 1040 is done with the personal tax s/w and they don't share data ... you can't import 1099 data stored with a 1040 into a 1041 (it would be nice).

About 4 years ago I switched from Turbo Tax to Tax Cut and have never looked back. I find Tax Cut to be a complete and comprehensive product, easy to install and use.

Last year I used Tax Cut and it worked brilliantly. This year was painful beyond belief. Buttons would route to incorrect places, the program would not route to errors, nor would it let you access locations of some errors yet would not let you proceed without correcting the errors. On-line support was not even close to helpful. Most concerningly is the excessive number of times the program required me to input my banking information, only to have to repeat it again after the "next" button kicked me somewhere unexpected. I severely regret ever hearing of this supposed tax prep "service".

I have been a TaxCut fan for 3 years and now wish that I have never heard about this software product. If you have a Vista operating system, do yourself a favor and do not buy this product. It has been a nightmare! I have been working with the taxcut people for TWO months. I have been waiting so long, that they offered me a free "key" code for the online system and so I spent a couple of days completing my return and then went to file and found out that the key code doesn't work. I have been on hold for hours and no one seems to care.