Review by R ANTHONY KOLSTEE

Ive been using TurboTax for many years to file my returns, and had always been satisfied with them prior to this. Ive used both the online and installed software versions of their product in the past. My tax situation has been complex enough that Ive had to purchase much more expensive editions of the product to handle all the forms, and Ive generally paid extra for the audit defense guarantee.

This year I had two issues that really soured me on their product.

First, in some situations Intuit won’t let you retrieve and print prior years returns unless youve paid for the current years product. I cant remember whether I filed the prior year in their online version or the downloaded software, but I am buying a house and needed to retreive the prior return for the bank. The lesson here is don’t just save your tax return in Intuits file format. Export it as a PDF, save AND print it for your records.

The second problem had to do with one form I needed not being ready. I started my taxes in early January and filled in details as the forms arrived. The warning that I couldn’t file because a particular form wasn’t ready yet kept coming up, and finally I started looking for help in the forums. I found an article posted by them which said the form in question was available for everything but E-File on Mac, and that it would be available for that final format on January 30th. Two weeks past that date not only is the form not available for E-File, but printing a copy of it produces a big watermark DO NOT FILE - FORM NOT FINAL even though its supposed to be available. I tried checking for updates and reinstalling as suggested but no luck. I was finally able to find a telephone number for customer service and speak to someone there after a 20-minute hold, only to be told they had no information other than what I knew from searching the forums, and no process for escalating my call to anyone who could help or even give me an updated ETA. I was promised a full refund for the software but have had to start all over on preparing my taxes and several weeks have gone by in which I could have already filed my return.

Intuit makes it hard to speak to anyone in the first place, and harder still to find anyone who can help you with your problems. Between that and the limited access to your own information that magically becomes no problem if you simply give them more money, Im very dissatisfied.