Customer Reviews

TurboTax Business 2003

Maybe I'm blessed with a simple business model or lack some of the complications and complexities compared to the other reviewers but I really cannot complain about this product. I have had frustrating experiences with Intuit in the past but not this time.

My final comment is this: if the $100 I spent on this software helps me to permanently avoid the annual $2,000 payment to my CPA for tax preparation, then I'll gladly buy Turbo Tax Business year after year. The $1,900 difference will go to a Hawaiian vacation! Mahalo, Intuit!

The most disturbing deficiency is when errors are found during the review. First of all these errors are simple reconciliations of two lines in the return. The software performs the math and numbers are entered through worksheets. However, when the review finds a reconciliation error, all the software says is something like "line 6 on form x is not equal to line 9 on form y". When you search for help, all it says is "line 6 on form x must equal to line 9 on form y", and that's all. To resolve the problem I've had to read the appropriate pubs, instructions, and forms myself.

Also, the itemization of the deduction isn't much better than paper and pencil. To use the software you need to know more than the software.

Great, thanks for nothing!

Tax Cut worked fine for my 1040, and with some difficulties it also worked for a 1041 trust return. But it simply could not file a corporate tax return, 1120-A. The software was buggy, it wouldn't print a sample return, and a week before the deadline it still hadn't updated the forms. Worst of all, an attempt to update had corrupted the file. (See the agonized comments on the Tax Cut Home & Business page.)

So I ordered TurboTax Business and paid for express delivery. It worked just fine, though of course I had to enter everything anew because the Tax Cut file was corrupted.

In the future, I will stick with TurboTax Business, and add a cheapo version of the personal tax software, which is available and cheapest. (I prefer to deal directly with the forms, without interference from an "interview.") But I will never again try to save a buck with Tax Cut Home & Business.

It deserves a rating of minus 10 stars.

It is hardly more than a fill-in-the-blank set of continuous forms. It assumes you are fully familiar with the entire multi-thousand page Federal Tax Code and offers no real on-screen assistance. In a word, it is a (...) waste of time, a vast black hole of time wasteage.

Besides, it demands a fearfully long registration process just to refuse the incredibly stupid junk e-mail that Intuit will smother you in if you do not turn off its relentless marketing junk.

For all of this, you should pay $100? Not next year.