Rating Summary
“Big unwieldy program, but helps you do taxes (until gov't does)”
- a coder, tech savvy, always online, cost-conscious, practical, value conscious, budget-conscious
- Pros
- Helps you organize your tax data, Free efiling
- Cons
- purchasing it every time tax law changes, Takes lots of disk space, Always trys to upsell you to premier
Intuit TurboTax Deluxe NS 2008 —
My review is actually for Turbo Tax Deluxe 2009 rather than the 2008 version listed, but besides being for different years I think they're fairly similar (new tax laws for 2009 would be main reason you'd want to get the appropriate version for whatever tax year you're dealing with.
I've previously used different versions of Turbo Tax, but last year used H&R Block Tax Cut software. I need to itemize and don't think I'm eligible for the free online tax preparation services (though I understand both Intuit and H&R Block have online versions of tax software which are probably similar to the "download and run on your own OS" tax software which I'm reviewing...but since I've not used those versions I can't comment first hand on how they actually are).
Both Turbo Tax and Tax Cut take you through interviews which try to determine which forms you need to fill out, though they let you go directly to the forms themselves. This sounds like a good way to do your taxes, but for me (though I may be different than most people) in practice I tend to get a piece of information (like a W2 or 1099 form) in the mail and enter the data directly in the program on the day I get the info...so one day I may be entering W2, another a statement of interest received, another donations, etc....the point being that I never do all my similar categories at the same time (like both Turbo Tax and Tax Cut are organized if you follow their interview format).
Turbo Tax also seems intent on "upselling" you to their higher (more expensive) version if you make specific entries...for instance I had investment income and capital gains, when I entered in the information it tried to get me to go to the "Premier" version vs "Deluxe" (the former is significantly more expensive than the latter)...I've used "Premier" for previous tax years and I ddn't find it necessary to upgrade even though I have investments (don't have business income so maye that's part of the difference. One caution I read about Turbo Tax in the newspaper is that when entering capital gains you need to make sure you enter your basis for the stock, otherwise it will assume "0" which could significantly increase your taxes.
Turbo Tax does let you import data from either your other data sources (like Quicken or Microsoft Money) or from financial institutions. I didn't try my W2, and some financial instutions I use don't support the importation of their data, but this can be handy if they do, especially if you have complex tax situation...just remember to review the data entered even if imported, since like the capital gains example mentioned above, you don't import everything of significance related to the account. It got me thinking about why we have to explicitly do our taxes ourselves anyhow, since the government requires electronic notification of almost all our financial data, except maybe for donations they don't know about or some medical expenses or deductions...they should really be proposing tax we pay, reduced by our deductions (maybe only should be doing deductions and capital gains online?...maybe in the future...we won't have to pay for a program to do this, it would be "automatically" done by IRS?
Turbo Tax lets you efile for free (not sure about 2008, but some previous years there was a significant extra charge for efiling. This seemed to work well.
Turbo Tax takes lots of resources, in terms of computer storage and memory to run...undoubtedly to store all the forms...too bad it doesn't just let you download the necessary ones having to do with your specific tax situation.
Intuit TurboTax Deluxe NS 2008
Search Sears.com
for Intuit TurboTax Deluxe NS 2008 prices
