<p>Assuming you mean by “better” that you show you should pay a lower amount of tax. That implies that one or the other of the packages is calculating something incorrectly… have you ever tried to figure out what the difference is in the result? I personally would want the package that most closely followed tax law.</p>
<p>Really? Im not talking about 100s of dollars. More like several dollars in state tax. Geesh!</p>
<p>Well, you didn’t say that. That could just be rounding (although there are rules about how even that is supposed to be done).</p>
<p>You take yourself too seriously. I dont need to say anything. I get better results with Tax Act.</p>
<p>Nope, I take tax law seriously. And think people who are flippant about whether their results are correct are asking for trouble.</p>
<p>I agree with intparent. I’m an enrolled agent, and if you’re correctly putting the same information into two different programs, if you don’t get the same result, something is wrong. It may not mean much, dollar-wise in a particular year, but I wouldn’t be comfortable with that at all. On the other hand, you may be putting the information in incorrectly. That’s usually the case, in my experience.</p>
<p>And I agree with them both. There is only one correct answer. I would want to know which program is doing it correctly, not which one saves me a few bucks.</p>
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<p>Wouldn’t rounding (according to the rules) vs. not rounding potentially give you two different possible correct answers (though not necessarily different by much)?</p>
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<p>This is what the IRS says about rounding. So yes, it is possible you could end up off by a few dollars if numbers were rounded in one program and not in the other, and that is allowed by the IRS. But it seems like one program should not consistently give a “better” answer if rounding is done correctly.</p>
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<p>Although, in a small sample size (one person doing a year or few of tax returns), it is not out of the question that program X that rounds gives a few dollars “better” than program Y that does not round (or vice-versa) in each case. Over a larger sample size, rounding versus non-rounding should be approximately equal.</p>
<p>Perhaps what is more important is to try to understand the meaning behind each calculation, so that you have an sense of whether the result “looks correct”. If you have no idea what the correct result should be in the ballpark of, then you could easily not notice a data-entry error (common) or bug in the tax software (less common) while using the tax software to prepare your tax return.</p>
<p>I have been using Tax act online for a few years and have been happy with it. It is very inexpensive and pretty easy to use, including the ability to download trades from my brokerage account at Schwab to the program. </p>
<p>I get a headache from doing my tax returns, even using online software. The entire process makes me ill. The few times I have investigated an issue to find out what is behind the calculation I always coming away astonished at how they turn a simple calculation into a ridiculous mind numbing exercise in arithmetic gymnastics. Some of the hoops jumped through are unreal. I am happy to just let the program do it. It is a national scandal that our tax system has gotten to this point, where a computer program (more or less a black box) is required to calculate taxes owed.</p>
<p>We use Turbo Tax. DH has done returns for both guys in the past, though expect that S1 and DIL may be arranging that themselves this year, which is as it should be.</p>
<p>We keep hard copies of our returns on our hard drive. Depending on how many state returns we have to file (between us and the guys, we’ve had as many as four), some are submitted electronically and others are done by mail so we aren’t paying $$$ for extra state TT licenses.</p>
<p>A lot of info does carry forward on Turbo Tax from year to year, including charitables – since I load in all that info, this is a feature I appreciate!</p>