Customer Reviews

TaxCut 2005 for Business + Business State [Old Version]

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1 star:		(15)

 

 

I have many complaints about this program - too numerous to mention. Here are just a few of my biggest...

The program has not been thoroughly tested. It's buggy and not well thought out.

It does not include all of the forms that I needed (and, as of January 31 2006, were not yet available for download).

The program does not allow the user to choose where to save the tax return, so backing up your return is exceedingly clumsy.

The interview starts from the beginning each time you open a return that you've been working on, instead of remembering where you left off.

Support line for TaxCut is horrendous - long wait times and the reps have no idea about how TaxCut Business works.

Stay far away from this product!

I moved from TurboTax to TaxCut a few years due to Inuit's C-Dilla fiasco, vowing never to return... Having used this year's TaxCut for Business & Business State, I'm soon to be (again) a loyal TT user.

I installed the Federal program and, when directed, also installed the State program. The first piece of bad news was that I couldn't import last year's return (also prepared using TaxCut). The comments in other posts about slow, useless technical support are confirmed; 30 minutes of online chat during which I was asked exactly one pertinent question from a person who obviously knew less about the product and its features than I did. In the end, I was told that it might maybe kind-of possibly be a good guess that some form or other wasn't approved yet and, so, I should wait until mid-March to see if I still had the problem then. This was on March 11th and - as we know - corporate taxes are due on March 15th. I abandoned the attempt at further technical help and just re-entered the information.

The interview does, indeed, not keep track of it's location; very frustrating. Also, there are indeed many places (MANY places) where the TaxCut interview process is as follows: "Here's a form. Fill it out. Don't forget the important stuff."

When I finished the Federal return (expecting to navigate into the State interview), TaxCut was unaware that just hours earlier it had installed the State program. I had to re-download the State from their web site and after being told that I had successfully installed the State, it still wasn't available. I had to close and re-open the program to move from Federal to State. And, OBTW, re-enter a bunch of stuff that shoud have been transferred from the Federal return.

This is definitely the worst tax preparation software (and, quite possibly, the worst commercial software of any sort) I've seen. It's atrocious. I'm embarrased to have bought it and I really wish I'd have read these other reviews before having done so.

I need this product in order to file an estate income tax return. In a significant change from last year, the product can no longer do your own personal tax returns (1040). So now you have to end up buying two tax software packages.

Also, it's substantially higher priced than other TaxCut software and doesn't have a rebate.

Like before it assumes are relatively sophisticated (tax-wise) and will know what forms you need. This is a safe assumption given the target audience for this software, but a first time user will be somewhat stunned as to how less user-friendly it is than the personal TaxCut versions.

This is a pretty bad cut-the-corners hack-job of a program. I'd give it 0 stars if that were an option.

My TaxCut business return for 2004 disappeared silently when I uninstalled the 2004 product. Did the uninstaller do it? I don't know, but I didn't delete the files manually. As a result, I can't import last year's data.

When updating the software, a dialog came up that ambiguously claimed that some forms were not available. It didn't say which ones, or suggest how I could tell.

It frequently leaves out explanations of entries on forms. At one point it claimed misleadingly that a form was not available and attempted to force me to skip the form, which was needed for asset depreciation. Guessing that the Forms menu might allow it to be downloaded, I tried to Preview and it again misleadingly claimed the form was not available. I clicked on "Open" and it downloaded. After that, I had to click on "Back" a few times to restart the asset process.

The asset entry form is among the worst user interfaces I've ever been cursed with using. There is no excuse for something this bad to survive from the 2004 version of the TaxCut product. It would not respond to a TAB or ENTER/RETURN to go to the next field, forcing the mouse to be used repeatedly. Nor does it provide a way to import from a CSV or spreadsheet. So for anything more than a couple of lines, the costs of data entry time alone well exceed the cost to buy a competitor's software.

It doesn't automatically place you back at the last step you were at, if you interrupt the process, save, and reopen the form. This was annoying. But when I reopened a form after interrupting the entry process, the software incorrectly began setting check boxes to YES or NO, ignoring the prior settings. That's not just annoying, its a very big risk.

Often, questions are posed in such a way as to make them indirect, more ambiguous, and less clear than the paper IRS forms. It is a reflection of the "cutting corners" feel of the product when it is less clear than an IRS publication.

As far as the rest of the interface is concerned, the product often leaves you guessing. Sometimes it uses checkboxes for Yes/No answers; sometimes using buttons instead; often there is little obvious indication of what step to take, or what the consequences are of taking an action.

For those reasons, I'm dumping TaxCut for Business (as well as the TaxCut Deluxe+State I'd purchased with it). It just isn't worth the headache.

I purchased this product to file taxes for my new corporation founded over the past year. I presumed that this product would guide me thru the process smoothly, with intuitive menus and explenations of the tax terminology, but it did no such thing. I should mention I have filed taxes by hand for the past ten years for my personal taxes, so I am not a complete stranger to filing taxes, albeit this was corporate tax, which is quite a different beast. That fact is why I purchased this in the first place - however the screens that prompt you to select from a series of options provide no meaningfull explenation as to what the options mean in english and certianly no pros and cons. Furthermore, I expected this software to integrate seamlesslly with Quickbooks, which it does not support in any shapre or form whatsoever. Run, dont walk, from this software. You are better off using the IRS booklet than this, at least that explainsa lot more than this. I am now going to purchase Turbotax, which works with Quickbooks, and I spoke to several other companies I deal with and they all swear by turbotax.

One last note: I also purchased Microsoft Money 2006 for Small Business with this, because you can get some rebate. This product is inferior in every sense, and I usually love Microsoft products! It also has no means of importing from Quickbooks (thou Microsoft will tell you to export from quickbooks into a name list - meaning you would lose all transactions and only have say a list of vendors, but they do not know how to export this list from quickbooks!!!!)
I am happy to say MS-Money has a 30-day guarantee and TaxCut has a 60-day guarantee, and both products are in the mail back to the manufacturer. One alternative to Quickbooks from Microsoft you may wish to consider is Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting, although I personally have not tried it, but do not under any circumstance waste your time with MS-Money.

I purchased this product instead of TurboTax because it was a few dollars cheaper. Guess what.. I'm now buying TurboTax because I simply don't trust this software. I have an accounting degree and have been doing my personal and business taxes for years now. Save your money!! Buy TurboTax.

Avoid! Do not buy this software. You have been warned. I WAS a long time user of TaxCut but this year the interface is awful, the program is super buggy, Did not come with all of the forms, downloading forms are a nightmare, program crashed and closed on a regular basis, there are no interviews for the business forms, can't seem to figure out how to use the program, had to select a different type of business to get program updated, program is nothing like previous years.

In short I feel ripped off. I don't know if the other versions are like this, but the business is. Maybe I need another version for a complete Business/Personal experience. I have no idea and the program does not seem to help.

To be honest with you I would rather do my taxes by hand than to use this program.

Don't get this product confused with previous years' "Home and Business" offerings. Call it what you want, but to me this was a deceptive move to boost revenue. The previous years included all the forms, interviews and software necessary to do both home and business. Not to mention, at the same price! To acheive the same results, now you must purchase two separate products, Business AND Premium, both of which are not cheap. Just a bad move IMO. I've been using this product since 2000 and this just may sway my next purchase.

Customer support is horrible. There's no other way to describe it. Long hold times (both phone and online chat). Add to that, representatives who do not understand the product features and offerings. It makes it very difficult to work through simple issues. Be prepared for the "check the FAQ" line.

I used the TaxCut software to prepare my personal tax return the past two years and was very happy with it. The software was easy to use, it led you through a serious of interview questions and made suggestions along the way. I recently started an S Corp. and thought I would use TaxCut Business to handle the taxes for the corporation. I have no employees besides myself, no product or inventory, and no source of income other than consulting fees. Should be easy right? I couldn't have been more wrong. After about 4 hours of struggling with this software I was no farther along than when I started. It provided little guidance as to how I should be filling out the forms. The personal edition will ask you a series of questions to guide you through the process, no so in the Business edition.
This software is a blight on the TaxCut name and it is a real shame that they distribute this product. As much as I liked the personal edition I may not go back to using it after this debacle. Maybe I'll give TurboTax a try.

I am using TaxCut Business to prepare a simple Form 1041 for a trust. This has to be the WORST example of tax software I have EVER come accross. Entry boxes that will not take an entry without an override, endless loops (entry comes from another forms entry box which comes from the first box, which comes from the 2nd box, which comes from the 1st box ....), inability to reaccess an itemized list after it is created, inability to move around between forms without going back to the interview and taking a wild guess, and a totally useless help section, just to mention a few. What a piece of grabage. This apparantly is produced by an outfit named ATX II LLC and bears no resemblence to the personal version for your 1040. Dont even THINK about paying good money for this.