TTax Release Notes

"Sad"?! How about "ridiculous"!? This is not rocket science, and they've had this available and working in *all* the past year's releases. What can it possibly take to get this to work NOW? I, and others, have been venting about this on their feedback pages for a month or so now.

But thanks for sharing the info Arthur. I hadn't seen this yet.

You're right, silly.

This year, I've taken the plunge and gone for H&R Block. Four reasons:

1. Vanguard isn't offering the steep discount/free that they used to on Turbotax. They have a link to a location where one can buy it for what they call a discount.. But the Premium version of Turbotax on Amazon is roughly half the price that Vanguard's link leads to.
2. All the reviews I've read on the subject say that Turbotax is "easier to use". But that H&R Block isn't far behind. Frankly, I wonder if that "easier to use" means, for most people, "more familiar."
3. From the advertising, the Deluxe version of H&R Block covers all the material that the Premium version of Turbotax does. That sounds like another excuse for a price increase from Intuit; and, indeed, Intuit is the more expensive of the two.
4. Every company is entitled to its attempts to get more profits, just like nobody is forced to buy from a single vendor. (Heck, if I wanted to, I could just download forms from the IRS/haunt the library and fill them out everything by hand, just like old times.) But the idea is to make your customers feel like you care.. And the better businesses do care, not only because they're staffed by people who actually have the milk of human kindness running through their veins, but also because they've come to the realization that if people perceive that if a company really don't care, they'll walk, given a choice. Intuit has played the roll of Evil Money Grubber one two many times for my liking. And I do remember their past and current actions. At this point in time there's at least one other choice in the marketplace. Now sounds like a great time to try the alternative.

Intuit's a public company. Given the disfunctional way the stock market in the U.S. runs (instant gratification and the current quarter profits is all the typical board of directors can see), it's not surprising that they're going for Max Profits by cranking up prices/cranking down support. But that's their choice.

I'll see how H&R Block runs. If it gets weird and goes south, then Turbotax is always out there as a fallback.. As is the library. :)

KBeck

Thanks Ken for the post. Be sure to post after tax season and let us know what your experience was. You're right about being "more familiar". I've never used anything but TurboTax since at least 2001, but my sister had (as well as Tax Act) and she likes it.

FWIW, I got the H&R Block software last year, did about 25% of my taxes and then bought TurboTax. I can't recall all the reasons but they had to be huge to get a tightwad like me to spend the money on TT!

I used H&R Block last year as I needed to get started before Intuit came to their senses and restored the Deluxe functions. I found it functionally the same, but the UI was different, of course and I missed the integration with It's Deductible. This year I'm back on TurboTax.