Review by Dougie Fresh

There have been a lot of reviews here with folks unhappy about the changes to Deluxe forcing them to pay more for Premiere. If you have your own small business, you’ve already been using Home and Business in the past so like me, you’re not going to see any changes since this is the highest tier edition anyway. As of this review, the pricing also looks to be a little less than last year for Home and Business. I can’t speak to the Deluxe and all that’s going on with that since I don’t use Deluxe so this review will not be about that but focus on my experiences with TurboTax (TT) this year versus years past.

It seems like every time I open the application, there’s an update so as is typical in January/Feburary before most people get all their W-2s, etc., there are still a lot of changes and updates going on. It seems like most of the changes are to the state part. One annoying thing on startup is it continues to insist I fill in my name, address, phone, etc. and take a two question survey. This seems to be so they can send me marketing information. They already have all this information and already send me spam, so why keep asking for it and then when I decline ask me again and again?nnIf you used Home and Business last year, you really won’t notice anything different to start. The processes are all the same. You can import your tax return from last year and it will pre-populate all of your information and then take your through the information to review it. You can then start with your business income and expenses. For the most part, the business part seems to be the same.

One thing TT2014 seems to do better this year than in past year is importing from institutions. It was able to find the forms at my semi-obscure bank and my Fidelity workplace accounts.

The personal income part had one very annoying change from previous versions and that’s to do with ISOs (Incentive Stock Options). In the past, when going through stock transactions, it would ask if the transaction was a stock exercise and then take you through a different process to find the basis. When options are exercised, if they are a disqualifying disposition (i.e. you buy/sell at the same time), the gain on the sale is reported as compensation on your W-2 so the cost basis needs to be calculated differently. This year however, for the first time since I have been using TT (1999?) this process is gone. It no longer asks if this is a ISO sale and walk you through the cost basis. You have to know how to do it on your own. I have no idea why they took this out of TT. Luckily, my company provides this information so it’s easy to substitute it for what’s on the 1099-B but if you’re seeing this for the first time, it will be confusing and likely lead to the income being counted twice.

As always, the state return is a pain. I live in one state with no income-tax (NH) but I have some income from another state that does (MA). This year luckily it’s just last year’s refund. TT insists on providing MA with all of my business income forms even though that business is in NH, even when I tell TT that income is not in MA it still wants to submit all those forms to that state. This year I have no W-2 income in that state but in years past TT always screws that up by taking the W-2 information from the wrong box (it says Box 1 or Box 16 on the MA PY/NR form and TT takes from Box 1 which is incorrect since the state income is reported in Box 16). So, that means I had to override and inevitably get a letter from the MA DOR saying there’s an issue with the submission. I reported this bug years ago. Crickets.

But, it’s the devil I know, not the devil I don’t so I keep using TT year after year and I probably will next year.

Good luck!