I enjoy the school-centric vocabulary:
@BTMell, you may want to call TT and articulate your dissatisfaction. I don’t know if your credit was for the full price of Premier or if it was $25. They comped me Home & Business + State, though I am a long-time customer (and fan of Intuit in general).
haha - can you tell I work for a college? I did give them a call and they gave me a credit for a free download. I’m considering doing that but not 100% sure…
If your sons have simple returns and lowish income they can file for free using turbo tax, tax act or many other programs. Both of my kids filled federal and state free.
I don’t understand why TT suspended only the State filing because of suspicious returns. Why would that not affect the Federal?
For federal, don’t you either need your AGI from last year or your PIN from last year to e-file? I don’t think state returns had checks like that. (But they should – state taxable income would be a decent start.)
Also, fraudulent federal returns will eventually be caught because of the duplication of SS numbers on different returns. But you can file multiple state returns using the same SS number and there’s no cross check.
You can file “for free” if you are willing to allow your tax data to be stored in the cloud. Not something I am willing to do.
I use downloadable TaxACT Deluxe with one state, and have used them for 10 years or so. My taxes are somewhat complicated - the printout I do to keep a paper copy runs 50+ pages. It does the job.
They almost always send me an offer in the summer to buy it for a discount - usually $18 or $19. It’s a pretty god deal.
I dread ever having to switch. PDF import would not completely work for me as depreciation schedules don’t get printed out.
@notrichenough Do you have to upload your data to the cloud with TaxAct Deluxe? I keep thinking it does and I do not want to do that.
Plus, do you know if it can do 1065 business forms?
TT has been great for me, but this year’s purchase was just such a PAIN and their phone support was also a PAIN. and I am made that the TT Business I need for 1065 forms only runs on a PC. It is getting very clunky to keep an old PC running.
@esobay - I use the version that gets installed on my computer, so no data is stored in the cloud while you work on it. The data goes through their servers when you efile though.
I don’t know if the Deluxe version does 1065s, I don’t need that form.
Looks like you need the Business version for 1065s, which costs around $50.
There’s no Mac version though.
No, TaxAct (free and otherwise) is a downloadable program, not “in the cloud” and it still free under a certain income level. My kids made around $5K each so not an issue.
Thanks for this - looks like we’re moving over to Tax Act. I’m wondering if Tax Act imports data from TT. Not essential but that’s what kept me going back to TT over the years.
TaxACT can import from a pdf creating from TubtoTax:
http://www.taxact.com/support/933/importing-from-another-tax-program/?txtSearchValue=turbo
I don’t think the pdfs contain historical data such as depreciation information, if any of that is relevant to you.
Thanks - no, we’re pretty straightforward. A few people have recommended TaxAct so I think it’s goodbye to TT. I do plan to let them know “why” I’m leaving them. Seems like the changes really backfired on TT.
Thanks @notrichenough! I don’t know why I didn’t find it in my searches! It was right there when I went to the Tax Act site.
Dang, SOMEONE please do a MAC version!
It’s a bit tech-y, but one solution for a Mac would be to use virtualization software such as VMware or VirtualBox (both of which are free for personal use AFAIK) and create a Windows virtual machine. Then you can run Windows programs on your Mac.
I imported last year’s TurboTax PDF into TaxAct with no problems. Schedule C, 1099s, dependents, AOTC paperwork and all.
@notrichenough , yes we do that when needed. I just got a new Mac Air though and didn’t want to install it on my new one. Got rid of Quicken when the Quicken for MAC became atrocious. Ran Quicken under wine for a while, but migrated to moneydance. Intuit is losing business hand over fist.
OSX has a growing market share, but it is still pretty small. It’s hard to fault Inuit for focusing on the 93% rather than the 7%.