Customer Reviews

TaxCut Platinum Home & Business 2002S

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

 

 

I used this product last year and was "very" happy with my personal tax return process. I was not as happy with it for my small business. It was not user friendly on any of the corporate issues! I had to go to an accountant to figure out my s corporation taxes. I "would" buy it again for personal taxes, but unless they have improved the product, I amm so so about using it for my business.

I decided to take a chance on this product after closing another intrusive pop-up sales window in Intuit's QuickBooks program and fearing the problems I heard about on this year's edition of TurboTax. I am so glad I did! The home side was easy, updating was no problem and it discovered that my accountant had placed me in the wrong school district (a quick call to a school official confirmed this). I have a VERY small business with two employees and the program was fine for that, however I can see where some people would question the 'robustness' of the product for larger businesses. The Business side also discovered two errors my accountant made on last year's return (glad I dumped the accountant). I am more than satisfied.

I've been extremely pleased with the personal TaxCut for several years, moving over when TurboTax got too bloated and Intuit too cocky. However I've stayed with Business TurboTax because of the import capability from QuickBooks.

QuickBooks, now also bloated and chock full of full of Intuit product promotions, has infuriated me with Intuit products in general. After reading about their fiasco with product reg protection in the personal TurbopTax, I decided to make the jump this year, import convenience be damned.

TaxCut Platinum made sense since I'm using their personal module and I frankly expected the same level of polish on the business version. However running the 1120 module reminded me of the old DOS tax programs I used way back in the late 1980s. It really is sloppy and non-intuitive. As the others mentioned, I'm shocked that re-opening a company doesn't take you to an auto bookmark, but instead to the first interview page. And forms management is non-existent.

It's nice to have a live Q&A window on each data entry sequence, but it's tiny and non-scalable. And maybe it's a registry bind with my XP Pro system, but I can't resize or minimize the program window - it's full screen or nothing.

But it did prepare the return, and did so at half the price of Intuit's offering. Still, Block really needs to go over this thing though, because it's no where near the quality of their personal module.

I've used TurboTax (top-of-the line model, for home-based business) for the past 4 years but when the price differential between it and this grew to $...I thought it was time to give TaxCut a try. I was concerned about its ability to import my last year's return from TurboTax without errors or glitches. TaxCut did this flawlessly. I found the process of completing the return quite similar; the "interview" method correctly filled in all but one form that I needed to file; that form I did manually, without any problem. The electronic filing went smoothly for both my federal and state forms; both returns were accepted within 24 hours. I downloaded the state form (free after rebate) and that was also very easy to complete. This software comes on two CDs, the "home" component and the "business" component. I am self-employed at home with a home office; I have no employees. I did not even install the business component of the software, it was not needed for what I have to do: the "home" CD has all the support you need for the home office deduction. In summary, the program worked great for me and I am now officially a convert. The only thing I remember TurboTax having that TaxCut doesn't have is the "talking heads" video clips from so-called tax experts, and these weren't that helpful anyway.

For several years up to 2002, I used TurboTax from Intuit - both the business and personal editions. Using TurboTax has been a pretty sucky semi-manual process that I've never been happy with. Believing some erroneous reviews (thanks for nothing Walt Mossberg from the WSJ), I vented my frustration by using TaxCut this year. It is horrific. It probably would have been easier to do my business returns by hand (even with having to look up calculations for depreciation). The other reviews cover most of the probs: it starts with trying to update the program and having it crash, continues through worksheets where you have to manually enter info that has already been entered elsewhere and a completely unintegrated (nonexistent?) help system, and ends where I had to go to the IRS and CA FTB sites to find the addresses to mail the reurns to.

I bought Tax Cut Platinum Business version. The help system is really lousy. Very skimpy. The interface is not intuitive. And worst of all, fter spending 20 minutes figuring it out and filling in the information (without much help), the software failed with a "runtime error" message.

I assumed it was some sort of fluke, so I rebooted and tried it again. About 25 minutes into typing my information, I got another "runtime error" message and my computer froze up. I then went out and bought Turbo Tax Business Edition; I cost more, but it was very nice. The interface is very intuitive, help screens are more helpful, and best of all it works.

A big Thank You to the customers who reported TurboTax's ugly activation code system. With TurboTax, you get one install only, and that's it.
When you upgrade to a new computer you'll lose access to your old TurboTax tax returns because your one-time install activation will have been used up. They can keep their attitude and their products.
I've switched to TaxCut Home & Business and it costs less than half the TurboTax alternative, as I would have needed their Basic as well as their Business packages.

I think the personal program is great but the business program is little more than a fill in the blank forms program. Plus I could not get the business program to update over the internet and you can't print without the update. I had no problem updating the personal program. Technical support consisted of an email telling me obvious solutions which I had already tried. Very poor support. I may use TurboTax next year even though it costs more.

1/26/03: I bought TaxCut after reading on Amazon about what was called spyware in Turbo Tax. After I received TaxCut and filled in the major numbers, TaxCut reported that I had a huge, unbelievable tax-due amount. From what I can tell, TaxCut may have taken a tax loss carryforward and taxed it as if it were income, so instead of getting a refund, I was hit with a heart stopping amount due. I've researched elsewhere on the Internet that TaxCut may have a problem in its AMT calculation; I think I'm going to return it (I don't need to be scared like that and I don't want to wait for an update because my trust is shaken), and may instead run Turbo Tax on a backup computer so that the spyware won't matter. Or maybe I'll see if online Turbo Tax will work.

Update, 2/9/03: TaxCut has since corrected the miscalculation problem I mentioned above, but my trust is still shaken. I've also looked more carefully at TaxCut's use of two programs (one for home use, and one for business) to handle the taxes. While the home portion has a step-by-step interview process (with less explanation that the Turbo Tax version, in my opinion), the business section seems to be little more than electronic versions of the forms, with little value-added explanation (though the IRS instructions are included). I've heard Turbo Tax makes you pay extra for some forms, I'm not sure, but in any case I'm no fan of Turbo Tax, either, as I have run into problems with earlier versions of it as well, but I don't think that TaxCut is the automatic answer. TaxCut's only advantages that I can see are that it doesn't install spy software and it's cheaper.

Deadline Update: Well, with all the bad reviews of Turbo Tax, I went ahead with Tax Cut anyway. Not good, because I found another error in the software, in that it didn't import all of the 2001 Turbo Tax data, resulting in an error in deciding taxability of prior tax refunds. Looks as if there is room for another competitor to step right in and pick up the business that Turbo Tax and Tax Cut are throwing away.

I started a parntership and a corporation this year and went to look for tax preparation software. Tax Cut Home and Business was cheaper than the alternate Turbo Tax product. The lower cost and the reviews I read on this site caused me to buy the Tax Cut Home and Business 2002, even though I have always used Turbo Tax for my personal taxes. I received my Tax Cut last week and started to prepare my return. Frequently the interview at Tax Cut just says "fill in the form". Never in whole interview did the program mention how to handle my organizational costs (must be amortized over a minimum of five years). After messing with that for an hour or so and getting poor results, I got back on Amazon.com and ordered Turbo Tax Business 2002, hoping it would be more like I am used to with the good interview that puts everything in the forms for you. It arrived one week later and I installed it and prepared my partnership return and K-1's. The Turbo Tax was great. The interview upon asking if I started the partnership this year, then guided me through how to handle the organizational costs. The interview never just said go ahead and fill in the forms, it asks you for everything and puts it in the form. While the Turbo Tax cost a lot more, it was worth every penny. The complaints about not being able to install it on other computers do not affect me, since I am using it on the one I have. If you need it on multiple computers you have to buy additional licenses. I highly recommend getting the Turbo Tax Business 2002 over Tax Cut Home and Business. The ease of use and detailed interview process was worth every penny extra I had to spend. My only wasted money was the worthless copy of Tax Cut I now own.