Customer Reviews

TurboTax- ItsDeductible

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

Gripe 1:

The back of the box says:

"You need ItsDeductible... If you donate clothing, household goods, or other items to charity..."

The inside cover lists specific examples, the last on the list is "Computer Monitor", in "Good" condition. It looks as if you can deduct $107 for such an item.

What the box DOESN'T say is that to access values for "Electronics and Computers", you need "ItsDeductible Deluxe features". For these you pay an additional $10 to "upgrade your software online".

Gripe 2:

There's nothing on the box to tell you the software can only be used for one tax year - and you must buy another license to use it for a second tax year. You don't discover this until you start the program for the first time AFTER you've installed the software. The example on the back cover of the box shows the tax year is a pull-down selection list, but when you see the actual screen, the year is just fixed text showing the year you selected when you first ran the program.

This is very tacky. It's hard to believe it's legal to do this. I presume Intuit is assuming it will be too much trouble for anyone to go after them.

These irritations are a shame because the product otherwise has good potential. Yes you could use an Excel spreadsheet as I already did to track my original donations, but correlating donation and value is much quicker with ItsDeductible.

My one electronic item? (a used boom-box in good condition) NO WAY I'LL PAY THE $10 UPGRADE. I'll just make up a dollar value and think less of Intuit.

I thought that this program would be like TurboTax, in the sense that I thought it would make suggestions on how I could change my charitable giving to save even more on my taxes.

However, it isn't much more than a glorified way to keep track of your giving -- which you could do in a spreadsheet program or Quicken or even by saving receipts.

The only thing I really learned from the program is that you can deduct the mileage for your trips to donate non-cash items. Other than that, my guesses as to "fair market value" for my donated items were pretty much right in line with what It's Deductible suggested. All that keying in ... and not much difference in the bottom line.

Moral? Don't spend the $20 on this one. Buy a really nice calculator instead to add up the value of all your items.

The program does produce a nice report, and it does import into TurboTax but it's database is pretty spartan. (Re: the import glitch: you need to close It's Deductible first, otherwise there's a file access conflict) The Jan 1st "glitch" is intentional -- the software is only good for one tax year. Don't buy this now thinking you can itemize last year donations and track this year's donations, too.

Database issues: You need the Deluxe version ($10 more) to download computer and electronics values (this is despite the example on the box saying 'computer monitor.' There was no 'kitchen chair,' no Barbie items (but Bionicles toys were specifically listed). I ended up building my own items and values.

I expected more from Intuit. I went to the support page to see about the refund (no $300 reduction here) but the entire page is under reconstruction. I'll update this review regarding success of refund attempt.

I bought It's Deductible last year. My computer's hard-drive started to crash in November so I backed up my data. This week I reinstalled it but can not open the program due to database errors. First it said that the file ID*.mdb was read-only (error 3051). Then when I unchecked read only I got database error 3050. Either way, there is no way for me to open the program and access all of the information I put in last year. When I went to the help site's "Chat with Live Rep", here is what the tech help person wrote:

"C Shiny: XXXXX, Thank you very much for being patient , we understand your position and we like to inform you this has been a problem with most of the customers and our technical people are working extensively on this issue. We are going to resolve and place the solution in the www.turbotaxsupport.com website, we apologize for the discomfort. Please bear with us. "

They apologize for my "discomfort" Discomfort isn't exactly the word I would use to summarize my frustration at having lost all of my information.

This was my first (probably last) time using ItsDeductible. One rude surprise was that you can't export the data to TurboTax for the Web, which is what I'm using. So after all that painstaking data entry into ID, I have to do it all over again in TTFTW. I have sent a suggestion to Intuit, hopefully they'll get that fixed for next year.

This product would be more useful if it was purchased at the beginning of the year, and you stored all of your donations in it as you go. Instead, I'm spending a half day transferring handwritten notes on receipts into the software... I'm thinking I will use a spreadsheet for that this year, and save the cost of this program.

Another beef is that there are numerous reports shown, but there are only really two! Cheesy.

So, as a learning experience: keep digital photos of your donations, tie them to your data (a spreadsheet or this software), make reasonable estimates on the Fair Market Values, and you will be in good shape in case of an audit. The government doesn't allow much in the way of deductions to the average tax payer, so take advantage of what you can!

I bought this product in January 2003 and began to enter all donations, both cash and non-cash donations. The product was simple to use and it ended up saving me a large chunk off my taxes. In December 2003 I was ready for the next version, but it was not available, so I bought the H&R Block Version - Deduction Pro, since I had done my taxes using TaxCut (which I preferred over TurboTax - but that's another story). I waited until I had a substantial amount of non-cash donations to make, which was after the 60 day return period. Bad move! The version I bought in December 2003 was for the tax year 2003. The 2004 tax year version is not due to be released until August or September 2004. In order to benefit from either of these products you have to enter as you go, otherwise you will miss out on the value of the deduction. I contacted the H&R Block Customer Service people (via e-mail) to see about upgrading from 2003 to 2004 and they basically told me that I was out of luck and that they had no good idea of when the 2004 version was coming out. Bottom line - It's Deductible is easy, good and, best of all, available for the tax year that you are tracking.

This was an excellent program at one time. This program now has a serious glitch in version 7 which renders the progam inoperable for non-cash donations, usually the most common ones made. It is missing a file "WSNonCash.pdf". I found this on two disks each from a different source, one directly from Intuit and the other purchased from a retail outlet. I would not purchase this product until there is some announcement that the problem has been fixed. Intuit is supposed to send me a new disk which I just discovered is on backorder. Maybe this means they are fixing the program.

For years I have bought Intuit products (Quicken, TurboTax, ...) but never before have I been so disappointed. Its Deductible should really be titled "Its A Joke."

Yes, you can track your donations (cash, non-cash, mileage, medical, and other property). And yes, you can print a report
and supposedly import them to TurboTax (I did not try it). But that's it. I bought the product to not only track donations (a fairly simple task) but to also use the "market value" data to properly value all of my personal assets--my home inventory--for Quicken and for insurance purposes. Getting this information out of Its Deductible is essential impossible.

It does NOT provide a report to print out the market values (good/ fair/ poor condition) for a category of items. The only reports it does provide are limited. The only way to get this information is to write it down by hand. Oh, and by the way, the shrunk-wrapped product does NOT come with this market data on the CD. You first have to connect to the Internet. For security purposes (e.g. read about all the PC break-ins lately) my financial software and data are on a computer NOT connected to the Internet. To get anything useful from Its Deductible you'll have to connect to the Internet--a requirement that the box does NOT specify. The program will then proceed to download a 2.9 megabyte update--which on a 26.6 kbyte dial-up connection takes a loooooong time.

Worse yet is that the packaging says nothing about a "basic" version and a "deluxe" version--for an upgrade price. In the box I obviously got the "basic" version which does NOT allow you to download market value data for "Computers and Electronics." Come-on Intuit, how about some resonable advertising on your package? They also don't tell you on the package that the product is only good for one of two calendar years (e.g. 2003/2004). It's NOT a reference product that you could use for a few years. No, you'll have to buy it all over again next year. The box says nothing about that!...

Intuit, you've outdone yourself this time. Its Deductible is-- Its a Joke. I wasted hours wrestling with it to try and pry some useful market data out of it to value my personal property (to better decide what to donate, what to sell, and what to insure). It was a waste of time and a waste of money. As a long-time Intuit customer they are pushing me to the competition. The bottom line--don't buy this product.

Regretfully,
Frustrated Frank

ItsDeductible *might* save you some money, if the installer would work properly.
Tech support is also worse than useless. The chat can't provide any help at all and the *real* tech support costs another $20.

Save your money on this. Buy the book and use Excel instead.

thought I'd try this since I clear the closet out all the time.

1st problem: Turbo Tax 2003 WILL NOT import the data, which is a MAJOR problem since, duh, that's why I got it. 2nd problem: if the program doesn't do a task, just leave it off the drop-down menus! They do this tease making you think they have all the values, well, they don't. But it makes you feel like an idiot/loser because you bought the basement version. 3rd problem: if you're a "letter-of-the-law-paranoid-tax-payer" like myself, reading the IRS instructions says you have to have records of the original value/purchase, yeah right!

It's pretty cheesy altogether. I wouldn't blow the 20 on this one. Just get the 8283 form and look it all up on ebay, since that's what I had to do anyway without their upgraded "deluxe" version. This one's pretty worthless, except for filling out the form for you (hence the 2nd star). No tech support ANYWHERE for it either since the company just changed hands. I'm sending this one back!