Customer Reviews

TaxCut 2004 Standard [Old Version]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

For the third year in a row (after I quit Quicken/TurboTax because of the C-Dilla debacle) I've used Taxcut. I don't think much has changed, but I don't care, since it meets my needs inexpensively.

It does the familiar Q&A, walking you through your return, and allows you to skip around in case you're waiting for info to file your final return.

I have a pretty complex return...a 10-page Schedule D with many short option sales, and a K-1 from a Canadian oil trust (with foreign taxes and a funky tax shelter reporting form). Taxcut handled the whole shebang last year without a problem (although going through the trades was tedious, even after importing them from MSFT Money). Moreover, I got an amended K-1 on March 30 (thanks a lot!!) and had to file a 1040X amended return...Taxcut handled that with no problems either.

This year I did a pro forma return at the end of December to check the consequences of tax-lot selling...Taxcut ate it right up without a hitch, showing me how I could trim over $10K off this year's bill by selling some stock that tanked. Without doing the pro forma, I'd be making many guesses and assumptions on Excel.

I gave it 5 stars because it's a great value for the money. If you expect this to perform as well as the Premium editions, with all their bells and whistles and free extras, you'll be disappointed. This is a bare-bones product...you get what you pay for. It is *WELL* worth the bargain price, and a must-buy over its more expensive competitor.

I'll be buying the '05 package this December!

This is my third year with taxcut. It works. I avoid Turbotax because of their reported spyware problesm (at least in the past).

Taxcut is a simple program and obviously H&R Block doesn't spend much on programmers. In fact I can't believe they have more than one part-time person on the front-end of it. It does not look professionally done, more like a beta version. Every year I've used it the text has overlaped entry boxes. The information is displayed in an annoyingly small box with a scroll bar. They should just use the whole screen so I don't have to scroll. You could easily forget to scroll and miss boxes you need to fill in. It gets 1.5 stars for appearance and use.

That said, a fairly simple return takes about an hour and only costs $9.99 (Walmart's got you beat Amazon). It's a tax code and at the end of the day I don't need anything pretty.

It does try to sell me more H&R services, but I guess I've grown used to that. Still, it would all go faster without that in the way. And the navigation just isn't great; in fact it might be poor. And it put two icons on my desktop that I had to delete. But it's this or TurboTax.

An aside: For the life of me I can't figure out why I need to buy tax software. The government could save money, trees, errors and time if they'd distribute a free software package. If they write the rules the least they could do is let me download a free program to interpret them.

I have used Tax Cut for several years and reasonably satisfied. But the 2004 edition has an error in the auto update software that causes "UNEXPECTED ERROR" flag when trying to download the update. The TaxCut web site acknowledges the error and lists cause as UNKNOWN. Wasted time disabling firewall, anti-virus, etc. with no resolution. The only solution is to download a full update from their web site which is 42 mb and takes 3 hours with a 56K modem. Imagine this when buying software to speed your tax preparation. A check of the internet shows others having this problem also. Apparently they did not do much quality testing of this product.

Otherwise the software is similar to previous years.

We used TurboTax for a couple of years then switched to TaxCut on the advice of friends. It saved us a lot more money! It is more knowledgeable at making the most of one's deductions than TurboTax. We are sorry we didn't switch last year when we first thought of it.

Last year we were able to file a printed return using this software. This year not only could we not down load the mandatory update because there were no instructions that worked, but the software would not let us print a filable return only one with "draft do not file" written all over it. We went to Smart Tax, one of several on line providers listed on the IRS site, and used this to prepare and file our 1040 for free, and our state for a small fee this afternoon! I'll admit that having done the draft with Tax Cut helped. I'm not counting on Tax Cut to get this fixed by next year.

My mother worked for H&R Block for many years, so I have no personal problem with them.

I have not used the 2004, but I just quit working on the 2002 edition. I have rental properties and, even though I entered the information where it belonged, it somehow got transferred elsewhere. All of my real estate taxes got moved from where they belonged to form A. Entering the information directly onto the tax forms required me to override every single step. Also, I was not able to go to help and figure out what my standard mileage cost was, so it took me considerable time to go through their mileage dialogue boxes.

I had used Turbo Tax in previous years and was not unhappy with them; however, I had heard that Turbo Tax put spyware on the computer, and made it difficult to install on more than one computer. TaxCut was cheaper, and I figured there would really be no difference. However, at least for year 2002, there was a big difference.

I downloaded TaxAct just a moment ago; it is cheaper than either turbo tax or taxcut, and so far, it behaves just like it is supposed to. I have been entering some info by their prompts and other info directingly onto the tax forms, and, except for the fact that the auto-save requires me to hit the hardreturn every time, other than that, I really like TaxAct.

Last year, a bug in TaxCut caused by W2 to be entered twice in an e-filed return. Instead of getting a healthy refund, the IRS thought I owed them several thousand dollars in back taxes, penalty, and interest. Speaking of interest, HR Block showed NO interest in helping me with the problem that their bugware caused. It took me several months, several nasty letters from the IRS, and a long stream additional forms (not supported by TaxCut) to get the TaxCut problems straightened out.

I'm giving this product one star only because I can't give it zero. I heartily advise you to do whatever you need to do to avoid this product and this company. Use TurboTax, calculate by hand, or hire a CPA, but do NOT trust TaxCut.