I've worked on the tax return most of the morning. This year I'm using TaxCut from H&R Block. Always before, or at least as long as software was available, I used Turbo Tax. I didn't want to change, but the following excerpt from John's site will explain:
January 03, 2003
Question: "How do I benefit from this approach?" Answer: "You don't."
Before you make the mistake of purchasing TurboTax this year be sure you understand that you are not buying their software, you are just "licensing" it. Intuit TurboTax Technical Support
Yup. I thought it was really neat when I got a CD case last month with the new TurboTax in it in my mailbox. I thought that somebody had finally clued into the fact that you can send a disc out for a small amount and get people to try out your product. They are especially likely to when it's something they've bought several years in a row. But I opened it up to find that the "deal" they were offering a long-time customer was worse than what I could get from going to the store. Thanks a lot Intuit.
But I made the mistake of thinking that was as far as the insult went. I was willing to forgive the attempt to gouge me and still buy the product until I found out that they've added a Microsoft Windows XP like "activation" system to the new software. So your installation is tied to a specific machine and you can't give it to anyone else or sell it after you are done using it (even if you uninstall)... So just kiss the doctrine of "first sale" goodbye. You no longer "own" the product, you merely "license" it now for just as much as you used to pay to buy it.
Whil Whim likens it to buying a book that you can only use with one lamp. Woe unto you should you change the lightbulb, break the lamp, or wish to get rid of the book but not the lamp.
All I can say now is "%&@) YOU" Intuit. I'm one long time customer who will NOT buy this years product or next years or any other years as long as this is the way you run things.
So you see, NO WAY was I going to be able to use TurboTax. I totally agreed with him, but I was concerned about importing last years return. TaxCut promises that will be no problem. Well yeah, if all you want are the names, social security numbers and list of W-2s from the previous year. Only a small part of the data from the previous return is brought in and what is is difficult to update. Maybe it's just my unfamiliarity with the software, but I had to hand delete much of the old stuff to fill in new values for this year. And on forms and such that didn't pertain to this year, I couldn't just delete them as a whole, they had to be done line by friggin' line. ARGGGHHHH. As for last year's deductions, I just had to go find the hard copy. As we tend to contribute to the same organizations year after year, it was nice in TurboTax to have all the details brought forward. The TaxCut interface is so screwy that every time you hit enter you go back to the top of the page when you should have gone to the next line. Have you guessed yet that I hate it??
I know that preparing taxes is a hair pulling undertaking and we are still waiting for some much needed schedules necessary to file so it isn't all TaxCut's fault that I'm bald. But given the choice again, I would choose TurboTax. Sitting down with a pencil might even be preferable. If you are only going to open it on one machine and you are doing only one return, opt for TurboTax.
Even if you have to do it on the sly.
Posted by Rockelle at April 7, 2003 01:39 PM