Customer Reviews

2006 TurboTax Home and Business Federal Win/Mac [OLDER VERSION]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I've used TurboTax (or MacInTax in the early days) for over 15 years to do my taxes. Most of those years included some form of business income, requiring a Schedule C to be filed. TurboTax Home and Business is a terrific product, taking you from gathering documents, to educating you about the tax code and recent changes, to data entry, to electronic filing. It's the whole package.

One year, we used an accountant to prepare our taxes, because of a particularly unusual income situation with complicated tax implications. In the amount of time that it took me to write down by hand all the information requested on the accountant's form, I could have typed everything into TurboTax and had my taxes filed. Plus, TurboTax is less than the $250 average tax preparation bill. And that year I really missed the tax education I usually get by going step-by-step through TurboTax, giving me tax saving strategies for the following year.

Faster. Cheaper. Plus tax strategy education. That's why I'm using TurboTax again this year.

P.S. There's no income tax for my state, so getting the Federal Only version is saving me $10. Thank you, Intuit, for splitting that apart and giving me the option.

I've used TurboTax for 3 years now! And again this year the software is the easiest way ever to do your taxes. Now I don't dread waiting till the last minute. I love to see the "Federal Tax Due" box get smaller and smaller. It is easy to download - no problems like some software. If you have the time to work on your own taxes then I suggest this program. Need help with a question - you can use the help box, get live help...

This is a product that is dependent on constant upgrades because the most current version of the 2006 tax forms are often not available when it first comes out. That is the nature of the product.

However, for the third year in a row, many Macintosh users have run into problems with their automated online form upgrade process. If the automated upgrade process does not work, you can do the upgrade manually, but that is a somewhat complex process. Alternatively, you can order a snail mail version of the upgraded program, if you can ever get through to the phone number you have to call. They always seem to be encountering a large volume of calls no matter what time you call.

Its a great product once you get it upgraded to contain the most recent version of the forms. I wonder if the automated upgrade process works for Windows users? At any rate, until they fix the automated upgrade process, an important part of the software, I have to rate it as low as possible.

Having used Turbo Tax since 1990 I feel that I am qualified to comment on it.

I have also used Quicken, Quicken Deluxe, Quicken Home & Business, QuickBooks Pro 2003 & QuickBooks Premier Contractors Edition. The Turbo Tax product seems to get more user UN-FRIENDLY each year. The navigation features do not allow as much mobility thru the program as they did in the late nineties and early 2000's. Like I said I WAS using QuickBooks Pro 2003 until tax time last year. I purchased Turbo Tax Home & Business like I had for the past 4 years, and really got a shock when I found out that it would not import my data from QuickBooks Pro 2003. Three year old software that was not compatible with Turbo Tax in 2006(actually 2005 tax year). I ended up purchasing QuickBooks Premier Contractors Edition 2006

($280+) in order to upgrade just to get my taxes done. Intuit in my opinion is a perfect example of major corporate greed. I am done with them and will purchase TaxCut this year.

Mutual fund basis calculations are broken, updates fail on the mac. Not to mention no state in this edition. It's absurd how many different versions of TurboTax there are this year. It almost takes longer to try to figure out which one to buy than it does to do your taxes. I'm done with TurboTax, switching to TaxCut

Worked fine for us.. Saved about $300.00 from using this instead of paying someone to do it for me.. so that in itself made it worth it!

I searched for Turbo Tax and the 2006 Edition was on the first page, my bad for not noticing, but poor way to display, I would expect the most current year to be placed first on the page. I returned the program and my refund was incorrect, I was shorted $35. So it has been a hasstle to get that corrected.

This is the best tax software there is - Period! It is very easy to use, and walks you through every step of the process. I had tried another tax software product, and it was very confusing and counter-intuitive. I had my own business for part of the year, and two W-2s. My wife is disabled and had a few 1099s. What could have been a very confusing return was very easy with TurboTax. We also had to file an amended return, and that was very easy as well. We will definitley be purchasing TurboTax again next year!

I liked the software itself. Being the first year I used it, I thought I'd start being a regular TT customer.

Then it was April 17 2007 and I tried to e-file. The servers would not respond ALL DAY. There were no admins to be reached on the support sites or the forums (except for one who said "I don't know what is the problem and I have nothing to tell you").

One major failing with this software is that it cannot AUTOMATICALLY try to connect. If it fails, it says "try again in 10 minutes". Which I've had to do all night.

Now - I will miss my tax deadline and have spent 6 hours at my computer trying to get connected. Mail is not an option now as my car is gone.

This is a major failure of the company and an utter lack of support, since their officials apparently couldn't be bothered to come in to work on tax day to offer us any solutions.

I will not buy again.

Have used TurboTax for years with no real problems. The low rating is due to the following:

Bought this in a store and discovered later when trying to download the state that it is FEDERAL ONLY! If I had known that I would have ponied up the extra minor $ in the store rather than the extra $30 for download.

Last year the state was included with this version - this year Intuit's new fine-grained tiering of their product line ripped me off!

Also, the price for this product is way too high, and the lack of an upgrade path is (pay less if you are a loyal customer) completely sucks. Intuit almost lost me a couple of years ago when they introduced product activation. They are in serious danger of losing me again.