Customer Reviews

TurboTax Deluxe No State 2005 Win/Mac [Old Version]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I used TurboTax for more than 6 years, but this is the last time. I could not import last year's return and could get no assistance to expain why last years information could not be transferred. Only my name transferred, but nothing else. Last year everying went great--what happenned? This is worse than an old Turbo Tax basic that I used several years ago. The Quicken import feature was a disaster. My dependents, and all other information had to be rekeyed. This combined with no rebate, difficulty getting the state return piece and updates that were not current--never again.

Buyer Beware!!!

Well it looks like Turbo Tax got greedy this year. Filing my taxes previously using efile cost nothing ($14.95 with a $14.95 rebate) but all that has changed. Now Turbo Tax wants $14.95 to efile (no rebate mentioned) and in addition a "processing fee" of $29.95. So that's an effective price increase of $45 this year to do my taxes. Wow.

I'll be printing out my taxes an snail mailing them in. A huge step backwards since I've efiled for the past five years. I've heard some good things about Tax Cut and will be trying it out next year. Bye bye Turbo Tax...

The program itself is pretty reliable although has become increasingly bloated with spam (upgrades and offers to get gift cards etc.) from previous years. The exorbitant fees to efile is a deal killer for me and I assume most others. Either go with Tax Cut or take the money and go to a real tax professional - you'll be better off!

What I love about it. It carries information forward from prior-year returns. It imports Schedule B and Schedule D information. It produces legible documents, something I could never do on my own.

What I hate about it. There are a lot of basically harmless annoyances (e.g. asking for information multiple times; persistently asking whether you `want any fries with that'; telling me that I'm not eligible to e-file because of multiple 8283s (which is fine), but then telling me on final review that there's an error because I haven't entered credit card data to cover an electronic filing charge of $0.00). TurboTax forgets where it's been after you apply updates; your data are still there, but it can give you a moment of panic because it looks like it lost your data. But here's something that can cost you money. ItsDeductible is poorly integrated with TurboTax. Review carefully what gets transferred from ID. One of my cash contributions didn't transfer - no discernible reason. Also, ID recognized some gifts of appreciated stock to be fully deductible, but after transfer to TT they showed up as ordinary income contributions. Trusting TT would have cost me over $3,200. I had to waste time digging through instructions to understand and correct what TT did wrong.

Won't let you choose your depreciation life or to depreciate two separate assets within one rental property (e.g. office building and office equipment). TaxCut does.

But TurboTax supports foreign earned income - TaxCut doesn't.

I've used this software for several years-I didn't feel it was quite as good as last year. The interview did not seem as extensive as before. I do like the fact that it transfers some information from the previous year (if still in your hard drive.). However, It still is much better than another competetive program.

I have used Turbo Tax for years and this does seem like the worst year. It takes away choice in many ways. It is hard to elect other methods than the what the program thinks is the best unless you cheat the numbers. Security transactions are difficult. Finding your way back to a specific point to check it is difficult.
Printing - you either don't print, or print pages and pages whether you need them or not. Nor does it offer options to print even and odd pages. In fact there are no page setup options.
I don't like Turbo tax, but I'm afraid to switch - is anything else better, and by staying with this one, it imports info from last year.
If you have Quicken, it imports data, but that doesn't always work real well.

I found a calculation error in TurboTax Deluxe 2005 that almost cost me an extra $700 in taxes. The error is on Form 1099-R, Box 4 where you enter federal income tax withheld on distributions from pensions, IRA's, etc. The amount entered into box 4 should be transferred automatically to the Tax Payments Worksheet, line 12 and eventually onto line 64 of your Form 1040 "Federal income tax withheld from Froms W-2 and 1099." With my copy of TurboTax Deluxe the transfer does not take place resulting in the under-reporting of federal tax withholding and the overpayment of taxes.
I contacted Intuit's online technical support and spent over three hours trying to fix the problem without success. Intuit's technical support consists of typing a question and waiting for five to fifteen minutes for a response until you finally give up out of frustration. The final recommendation from technical support was to reboot my computer which of course disconnected be from them - not a bad recommendation under the circumstances.
I now no longer trust TurboTax's calculations and will carefully check their calculations manually. This is what I used to do before I bought TurboTax.

TTDeluxe gets two stars because it works, but no more because of the cheap tricks intuit uses to get more money out of you. Specifically:
1. There is a $14.95 fee for E-filing your federal return. This is not indicated anywhere on the packaging (or it is well hidden). There was no such fee last year for TTDeluxe, so they catch you by surprise.

2. My copy (bought at Office Depot) came with "free" state software. However, the E-filing is only free if you do it at the same time as the federal filing. They don't tell you this. Also, the software only prints out the computer readable form of the state taxes. In order to check it I had to go to the state tax website and print out a copy of the forms and instructions. This makes it much more likely (as in my case) that you will file the forms seperately. Intuit should post a warning about this on the E-file page. The fact that they don't makes it clear that they are cynically trying to squeeze you for every dime. I will use Tax Cut software next year. They even put a free version of it in PCWorld this year (with a notation in bold type that E-filing fees were extra). Unfortunately I had already purchased TTax.

I've been using TurboTax for the last six years so you would guess that I had learned my lesson. When doing my 2003 taxes I was first introduced to the "check for updates" feature. I had made it all the way to the end but before I could finish the product insisted or should I say required that I check for updates.

After much frustration and failure I finally called support and received instructions on downloading directly from the web.

The next year I knew better and downloaded my updates from the web prior to even attempting my return. This time was better but still frustrating.

This year's release asks you if you want to check for updates immediately upon opening the program. This proved to be a wasted effort.

Next I tried their on line support page.

The only thing I learned from the web was that I was not alone in having this problem. According to their help site message board it appears that 99% of the questions and complaints were about updating the software.

Making a long story short after two hours of trying to update the software with the help of their on line support I had to call the help line. The first thing the person said was "do you have a fire wall?'

Duh! Yes I do. And I have virus protection. I was advised to turn them both off. This solved most of my problem. It still took longer than it should have but at least I got it done.

Why do they not tell you this in there instructions? It would have saved me a ton of frustration. I have to say that by this time I was so annoyed I was ready to go out and buy another product.

Another thing I found to be extremely annoying is that even though I had done the updates I was still instructed to check again before I could finish my return. This time I knew better and was able to by pass the option.

The only good thing I can say is that once I got going it was much better than doing it by hand but I am not so sure it was worth the frustration.

Here I am three days later and I finally have my return ready to mail. Next year I will be buying something different.

This version of TurboTax does not include the State Return portion of the program. If you live in a state without state income tax, this one is for you. It's cheaper.