Intuit TurboTax Deluxe Federal + State 2008

It had been many years since we did our taxes ourselves (used to use Turbotax 10 years ago), but we wanted to give turbotax a try after hearing how simple and straightforward it makes the process. Thought… the question and answer interview process helped make it much simpler, though it was still very time consuming entering all the data...but love that next year we'll be able to just import all that work we already did into our new return. Two main issues that i think Turbotax should improve - 1) for very simple/small amount of extra miscellaneous income that we got on a 1099-misc form causing us to fill out a schedule C, it was a royal pain to access the proper "interview" questions to complete both the income and the potential appropriate expense write off's that completing a schedule C should give you. Deluxe TurboTax keeps showing you a screen prompt trying to get you to upgrade for an additional $40 to the small business Turbotax which seems like overkill & unnecessary expense for this purpose. We knew from reading that schedule C is supported in Turbotax but had to repeated try different prompt options to finally figure it out, it's like they've hidden the entry a bit to try to push people to buy the more expensive option. 2) Turbotax should make it easy to compare whether married filing jointly or married filing separately would be most advantageous. For a number of dual income couples, filing separately can be better, but it was impossible to figure out how to do this. I couldn't get through on their help line till this morning after i gave up and filed jointly to get it done. The Turbotax rep tells me i'd need to either delete all the info and reenter it, or set up 3 different returns - one return with us filing jointly, one with my return filing separately and one with my husband filing separately and compare manually which is best. This seems to be a common dilemma for married couples, and they should make it a simple automated process so that i can electronically back in and out of it the different ways. Apparently you have to re-enter all your forms (W-2s, interest income, etc!!)in separate returns, one joint, and one for you and your spouse as separate returns to calculate which way is best. I was shocked when their rep told me that it had to be done separately/manually.

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To add to Mr Thornhill's review, wait to download the state software until you have entered your personal info for the federal return. At the top (below the menu bar) there will be 2 big boxes -- one… indicating your federal tax owed/refund and the other for the state. Once you enter (or extract from previous tax year) your personal info, then the 2nd box will say you need to download your state version. Nowhere does Intuit ask you for money if you follow this (one state download is free). The e-file for the state is $20, though; I chose to print the generated pdf and mail it. It took 5 mins to download with the Amazon software downloader -- I have 5 Mbps Verizon FiOS. The installation on Vista Home Premium 32-bit version completed without problems. The installation and updates took about 10 mins.

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Despite what their website says, the importing of prior year's tax returns is buggy if you used the online version last year. I decided to go with the desktop version after their online version kept hanging… (probably due to overload near the end of the tax deadline). I downloaded this and found that it refused to import my TXF file from last years returns, despite the fact that I followed their online directions to a "T". This is incredibly frustrating, because the whole origin of this difficulty is their determination to make each year's program not open any other year's, except for importing as prior returns. (That's why each year has a different file suffix.) They are clearly more interesting is squeezing as much money as possible out of you than in providing a quality product. The only thing I can say in their favor is that after one hour and 10 minutes on hold, they finally gave me my money back...

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