Tax Preparation Software for 2003? 112
Aaron asks: "After last year's debacle with TurboTax's copy protection system, I want to avoid their software (even though they say they won't do it again). But after reading some of the reviews on TaxCut, it sounds a bit buggy. What tax preparation software are people using for their 2003 taxes? I've heard of TaxACT, the free tax software - is that any good? I don't suppose any decent tax software works on Linux..."
Get a pro (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I will be VERY happy to go back to TurboTax this year - TaxCut sucked horribly and I have liked TurboTax for almost a decade now
Moral of the story - company does what I want them to - I will send my business back to them
Re:Get a pro (Score:2, Insightful)
Has it occurred to anyone here... (Score:5, Insightful)
That a tax system that requires spending money on complication-processing software, or having to hire an accountant/tax preparer, is a tax system in dire need of reform?
Re:Tax Act is the bomb (Score:4, Insightful)
BTW: for simple cases, under certain levels of income (about 25k I think) you can do your taxes for free on TurboTax.com (or could do it in years past, anyway)
Now here's the deal. I was a dependant for half of 2003, but then I got a full time job in May. I was a resident of NYC for half of that year, and half of the year I was not. I have a W2, and some 1099's. Some business expenses. Some charitable donations. I paid for college. I invested in a 401k....
With these more complex tax situations, it's not going to take you 10 minutes to file no matter what software you use. In fact, in the past I noticed that after all the permutations, where was no way that TurboTax and TaxCut agreed on how much my return should be
(I was running TaxCut on the PC and TurboTax on the website, they've got their full version on the website and it's free around to fuck around with, just costs money to file once you're ready)
I believe that last year, TaxCut gave me a better refund. It's just a question of what items of the tax law the software is aware of. I certainly know fuck-all about it. Until Tax Cut asked me whether I had put more miles on my car for business purposes than I did for going to the store (something of that nature anyway) I didn't know that shit would have any relevance to my tax return whatsoever.
If you have a tax situation of any complexity, using the right software makes financial difference. If all you've got is a W2 then you're probably OK using any of them.
I'd like to see some feedback as to who had a good experience with any of these programs when it came to tax nuance.
Re:I don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Another reason to use Windows (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't know about RMS, but I think the software would come from the same place as all other free software: from developers who write code. After all, the free software community has developed all kinds of software, even a whole operating system. Some of the brightest computer minds of our generation are involved in writing free software. Tax software isn't exactly rocket science. The problem is that tax software is thick with legal concerns. If I wrote a little gtk2 app that even did something as simple as accept inputs for the 1040EZ and then printed out an acceptable copy for the IRS (consider this my 1.0 release-- with plans to add itemized deductions for 2.0), am I acting as an accountant without a license? Am I liable for tax problems that my users have? Is someone going to enter a bunch of numbers wrong, get a totally hosed return that looks fine to them, print it out wrong, send it in and then sue me when they get audited?
These are concerns I don't have (as much) if I'm writing a web browser, an email client, an mp3 player, a text editor, or even an entire operating system for that matter. So the question isn't who's going to write the software, it's how the software can be distributed in such a way that makes it safe for developers to work on the code at all.
Another problem is electronic filing. Probably coding an app to the transmission specs needed to get returns to the IRS digitally is no harder than writing any other program. In fact, I'm guessing because it's the IRS that the specs are well described. But now we have a facilities issue. Does TurboTax connect directly to the IRS? Or does it connect to intuit.com, which then submits the return in a batch process?