which version of TurboxTax ?

In the oligopoly of tax prep software makers, three seem to come up most often in my experience: TaxAct, TaxCut, and TurboTax (in alphabetical order).

They each fill a market niche, and have product placement to match. A marketing student's dream case study! ;-) The answer to your question, "is it worth it?", really depends on your own preferences: tolerance for risk, interacting with a human vs. a computer, other uses of your spare time, and so on. How much data you can enter by importing on-line vs. keying in by hand is also a consideration.

The good news is, you can almost always start with the low-end offering and upgrade later in the tax season for an incremental fee, as long as you stay with the same vendor.

In the higher-end versions of each vendor's product line, I would normally expect more on-line or human help, more tax documentation, more import options, more planning tools, more guidance for the less-common tax forms, and so on.

-Mark Bole

TurboTax Premier has a more detailed interview for sales of investments, and it allows you to import your investment transactions directly from a large number of participating financial institutions. It also includes BasisPro to help you determine the basis of securities that you sold.

Home & Business includes all of the features of Premier, and in addition has a more detailed interview for a sole proprietorship. The other added features of Home & Business are probably not important to you, based on what you have said.

Whether the additional features are "worth it" is a subjective evaluation that you will have to make yourself.

The best place to get answers to questions about TurboTax is the TurboTax User Forums at

On that last message, I meant to say "thanks guys". I went ahead and sprung for the high-end "Home and Business" version, from some "amazon seller" who had 'em pretty cheap. No box he said, but he (mrjjwiley) claims it's all above board .

Now, I'll probably find out that those Intuit mofos have it set up that I HAVE to buy Home&Business from now on out, in order to be able to import previous years' data !

John

Apparently you did not deal directly with "those Intuit mofos", therefore I believe your speculation is unfounded, and in fact untrue according to my limited experience.

Regarding your original post, it would be helpful to know if you found it to be "worth it to spring for Premier or Home&Business" -- gratuitous vendor rants notwithstanding.

-Mark Bole

Ok, I'll try to give an opinion next spring.

Your tone suggests you take issue with my mistrust of Intuit. I believe their past behavior - mainly the shenanigans a few years ago - makes this justifiable. I also take issue with their gradual erosion of features that used to exist in the lower-end versions, which now one must buy the higher-end versions to see (stock options support, for one). Finally, it's galling that they charge a higher price for auto-renew customers (I call it the "loyal-customer surcharge"), or ones who visit their website, than I can get by going to Staples or by shopping the Amazon marketplace (as I did a few days ago).

John

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:54:32 EST, JGE wrote Re Re: which version of TurboxTax ?:

That's when I got disgusted with them and switched to TaxAct.

I've never regretted the change.

TaxAct.http://www.taxact.com/

I'm tempted, but I assume the competing products have slightly different ways of doing things, and I don't want to have to re-learn.

And don't get me wrong, I think TurboTax is a DAMN fine piece of software, I just think the company behaves a little sleazily at times ! Like many US high-tech companies (certainly the one I work for), it probably has a bunch of brilliant engineers, and a bunch of lying theiving douche-bags "running" the company ...

John

Got a rude surprise today upon receiving my copy of TurboTax (I opted for Home+Business, from an Amazon re-seller) ... turns out the Mac version only works with OSX 10.4 or higher. Guess I need finally spring for the upgrade.

I wonder what compelling reason there was for TurboTax not being able to run on 10.3 ??

If you upgrade to Leopard, remember that it no longer supports OS9 at all, so if you still have any "Classic" applications that you need, you are caught between a rock and a hard place - you can't run new applications (like TurboTax) unless you update, and you can't run Classic applications if you do. (You can upgrade to 10.4 - Tiger, if you can still find it - but that's only putting it off).

Maybe they own Apple stock? , but you are correct it will not run in less than 10.4 - it looks like they made many changes to the user interface which probably only will work with 10.4 or higher. I always use "forms" and I think the new interface for forms is huge step backwards and hard to work with.

Thanks, Ernie. Well, I'm back. Two weeks later. Bought a new old Mac with Tiger. Turns out I STILL can't install TurboTax. I just get a bunch of files and folders, but no sign of the icon they describe at the support section of the Turbotax website.

I'm starting to get pissed. Any advice much appreciated, especially from anyone who has successfully installed THIS YEAR's Turbotax on a Mac.

Thanks, John

TurboTax 2007 is installed and is running just fine on my Mac running Leopard (OS 10.5).

The only folders and files that you should have after the install are the main folder:

TurboTax Deluxe 2007 -> Extras -> tax.scd -> TurboTax 2007 (Which is the application)

You should not have a "bunch" of files and folders. Are you sure you have the Mac version?

If it won't install and/or run on Tiger, I would suggest that you contact support at turbotax.com because it should.

I add my expience with Turbotax, altho it is on a little different tangent. I have used Turbotax for 4 years. Usually I use the Basic since it fits my needs, but last year my son gave me Deluxe for Christmas. I had thought that Deluxe would allow me to file electronically without an additional fee but that was wrong. Deluxe has the state (PA) software on it, but I was disappointed with the state software. First, the Federal tax form that is outputted looks exactly like the printed Federal form (picked up at my local library). But the state form which Turbtax printed out looked nothing like the paper form. However the most serious objection was that the interview process for the state form was flawed. After I filed one of my friends told me that we are eligible for tax forgiveness, but the interview did not pick that up. When I called Turbotax they told me that when the interview asks if I am eligible for a tax credit I should have said "Yes"; how am I supposed to know that? The interview process should go through the "tax credit" process for me to determine if I am eligible.

Incidentially, most of my local electronic stores (i.e. Best Buy) do not sell the Basic.

Also I have been disappointed with the lack of software on the Turbotax disc, basically it gives me the right to download the software. That was an aggrivation since I was on dial-up last year.

I feel for you with a dial-up connection because the TurboTax CD available in stores is NEVER the final version. TurboTax usually goes on sale at retailers in early December which means the CD's have to be pressed and shipped long before that. Tax software, unlike other software, must be rewritten every year to keep abreast of changes in the tax laws. Even at this late date (December 17) some of the laws are still unsettled in congress. All the software vendor (TT) can do is release downloadable updates as changes in the law becomes known. Sometimes the updates are huge and take forever on a dial-up, but you should never file without the latest update.

I've managed to install (more below) but this isn't QUITE what I have, but close. And it works.

There is no "Mac version", one installation CD fits all. What I meant was, when I open the CD, I have a bunch of files and folders, but not the elusive icon that allows me to drag TurboTax 2007 to Applications. Oh well, managed to get hold of a login to TurboTax website and just downloaded the silly thing. The download appeared as nothing but the aforementioned icon, and the dragging procedure installed it just fine; of course, the download WAS Mac-specific.

Thanks anyhow, John

I think Deluxe usually includes a rebate form for the federal electronic filing fee.

That's true for MA, too. My understanding is that some states accept simpler formatting, so in these cases TT doesn't go to the trouble of duplicating the printed forms exactly.

My experience is that TT's state interviews are not as thorough as the federal, they're really just a simple front-end to the forms. They've clearly put most of their development resources into the federal section of the program.

Yes, but the CD contains two versions.

I think I see the problem. AFAIK (I used the download from Intuit and not the CD), the files on the CD are NOT drag and drop, but are packaged which means that you have to double click on the package (or installer) and let the installer unpack the files and create the application folder and application on your hard drive.

They dropped the rebates a couple of years ago. Now you pay for every e-file.

Many states REQUIRE a different format for computer-printed returns, typically so that they can be electronically scanned.

Bob Sandler