Customer Reviews

TurboTax Premier Home/Business 2003 [Old Version]

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

 

 

The name "Home and Business" is misleading. This product will *not* help you do any taxes for your business. It will help you print out W2s and other forms for any employees, but it won't help you complete a business tax return if you have a partnership, LLC or corporation. For that, you need the similarly-named TurboTax For Business.

If you have a sole proprietorship, this product might be useful if you have lots of depreciation. However, all it will do is a 1040 for individuals. It does a good job of this, and it is more helpful than regular Turbotax in calculating depreciation et al. for Schedule C. But again, I stress: if you are not a sole proprietor, you likely will not need this.

The remainder of the product is the same as TurboTax Deluxe for individuals.

PC version on Win XP. I only used for my personal return and this is my 3rd year with turbotax product. It is the only one that has any chance of handling more complicated returns with business income- none of the others even listed the forms I need. This year there was a glitch with form 6252- it imported data from last year but did not prompt me in the interview. I called support on tax day and had a live person within a few minutes. Later I used the chat for a follow up question.
service- 5 stars
software- 4 stars
overall value- 5 stars
I completed a complex return and 2 others a little less complex in less than a day. The help window on the side and other pop-ups (on request) answered every question I had (other than software issue) I also recommend "It's deductible" which integrates wonderfully with turbo and pays for itself many times over.

Very easy to set up and run if you have the info ready before hand.Had a flawless intergration of 2002 into the 2003 forms. I use the business portion heavily and was impressed with the choice of forms and speed of completing them properly.I had 42 sheets in my return and saved about $300.00 easily. The state was completed when the business finished and had no errors. The self-audit found some money savers on depreciation and amortization. I was done in about 6 hours. I took my time and did the forms over a 3day period. I recieved close to $8700.00 refund counting both state and federal. The elect. filing was smooth and I had my money in 4days from the feds. I rate it about an 8 out of 10. I will use it again. Dr. R.J.Richards

I have had trouble trusting the program entirely with tax preperation, so I did this comparison. First, I figured up my taxes for my personal/sole proprieter cabinetry business taxes on TurboTax and then went to my regular tax accountant who used to be an IRS auditor, and he is very thorough. Both times my taxes came out almost exactly the same. I'm impressed, and intend to do all my own taxes this year.

I've used TurboTax several years in a row now and once used TaxCut. Frankly, Turbo is easier to use for me after all is said and done. The download for the free state forms was a bit tricky this year, though the reasons are still unclear, but they did eventually download. Our taxes were completed in just a couple of hours, we'll get back a nice tidy refund as always. I've never been too particularly fond of Microsoft's TaxCut with all it's pushy pitches to get their other software programs so this was the best answer for me.

If you need to file a schedule C, or live in New York State, I would suggest spending your money on the services of a tax professional rather than this cripplingly flawed piece of software. (Based on my past years' experiences and several comparative reviews I've seen of the 2003 software packages, TaxCut is even worse!) The interview questions are confusingly worded for Federal, but are completely opaque for State, as if the questions were pulled directly off the state IT-201 form. I thought these programs were supposed to explain things. The help links skip definitions of many key terms, and are almost wholly absent from the State questionnaire, where examples and explanations are most needed, especially when tax is computed differently from the federal rates. What's worse, the State program asks for data that was already entered in the Federal questionnaire without even giving a worksheet or line number to refer to! If you go back to Federal and look it up, watch out: you'll have to answer every State question again to get back to the screen you had reached. There is absolutely no point to using this program. Go see an accountant -- you will thank yourself.

I was very upset when I could not get the updates for this program and the state sofware downloads on a 56K modem. Since that time I've upgraded to a cable modem and was able to finish my taxes with turbo tax. A very good product, after all. We have two businesses, lots of stock buys and sells and other misc. things that needed to be handled. The software had a lot of help and information along the way. The sofware really does a good job at walking you through all of the details. For many fields requiring a dollar value you can pull up a detail summary and type in all of the items that make up that dollar value (itemized deductions for example). When you print all your tax information you can print these details as well. That way you can see where you got that figure - very convenient to have this included. Lots of tax help and explanations available when you don't understand something. Provides error checking and running tab of what you owe or are getting back (always visible in top right corner of the screen). Provides check to see if anything might cause a red flag for audits and gives you reasons and ways to avoid raising red flags. Overall, I'm impressed.

I will be using this software again next year.

(below is my original post prior to using the software)

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I bought this software from intuit Web site a few months ago and installed it from a CD. I tried to dowload the free State software, first with my internet security on and then with it turned off (even though there is no mention that you need to disable your firewall). Still after 1 hour and 45 minutes the download was not complete. Because it is now tax time, and this company seemingly doesn't have enough staff for customer support, I can get no help with getting this State software dowloaded. I also cannot successfully download the turbo tax updates for the product. I am on a 56K modem unfortunately, but that should not be a problem. It is midnight now and I am still waiting for a live chat session (there was a 40 minute wait). So far, all I need is the product that I paid for and I can't even get that. I am very nervous about actually having to rely on the product to file my taxes. My guess is that a refund is out of the question, but next year, I'll try TaxCut.

After a diasterous last year with Tax Cut, several computer crashes and rollbacks to 98SE, I did not think I had much of a chance with TurboTax this year. Although I could not transfer my last years Taxcut info to Turbotax this year, I could not even open last year's saved Taxcut data with Taxcut! I had to enter my basic information and from then on I had no problem with the downloads, electronic filing and direct deposit. The schedule C, depreciation and deduction information were all very helpful. Highly recommended

I used this product because I was behind in my taxes. It helped. Don't expect any customer services from Intuit.

Worked an hour, not too many problems, however, got to the end and got an error, "Form not available." Intuit attempted to point their finger at IRS. . .

TaxCut worked flawlessly including the form that Intuit said was "unavailable."

Earlier this year after >10years w/Quicken I also switched to MS Money after Intuit excuses and lack of service. (I am very impressed with Money)

Suggest avoiding TurboTax, at least for a while until Intuit manages to get their act together.