Review by L. Wilson

I have been using TaxCut for many years and this year (with a new title) continues my personal tradition of getting my taxes done early and accurately. There was only one year (about 7 or 8 years ago) that I used something else because TaxCut was terrible. All the other years, it has been the best.

A few years I had to use accountants because of the complexity of my taxes for those years. After the number of obvious mistakes that they made, I went back to doing it myself. I got tired real quick of having to pay a lot for my taxes to be done wrong and have them delivered to me on April 13.

Although complete, there are a few (rare) forms missing and it would help if there was more information on-line and in the program. It is kind of awkward to have to go running off to the IRS site for a small but important piece of information. The program and the IRS are a little overeager to charge the AMT, even after the first time that it checks and says that I don’t need to pay it. Also, there is something about my returns that makes the IRS want me to pay in advance quarterly, even though almost all of my income is only salary–not investments, etc.

They are making a lot of progress on the state versions. The first few years, I had to do half of the state forms myself. They have improved this every year and now it is as easy as the Federal version, even though state laws don’t match up exactly with the federal version.

The error checking and other features of this program are really helpful, too. This year the e-mailing is included (it’s about time!), although you can still file the paper forms or the reduced paper forms. You can always get a copy of your return or one form on paper–even halfway through the process, if you need it.

I have never had to use their call-in service because of the completeness of the program.

They have a service that will send you the next year’s program on DVD so that you can start it and pay them online for it. I got that and then found out that Amazon’s price was $5.00 less and I received it in two days.

As an aside, I am not real impressed that the same thing happened to TaxCut that has happened to a lot of companies lately. It has been purchased by a bigger company that didn’t want to go to the trouble of competing with them.