TaxCut 2005 Standard [Old Version] :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

Better than the alternative

2006-03-16
I started off using Turbotax this year, but returned it to the store to use Taxcut instead. I purchased this version because it was a bargain, and it's easy enough to do state taxes by hand (or for free on the state website for those states that have that option).

I did have some difficulty with the update process, which was frustrating at first. However, I found Taxcut's website to be helpful on this point, and I determined that my firewall was the problem. I was able to update the product once I followed their instructions.

One key difference between Turbotax and Taxcut was that Taxcut is not integrated with as many companies. Whereas I could automatically download my W-2 and most of my 1099 forms into Turbotax, they needed to be manually entered with Taxcut. This wasn't a huge issue, but one difference people might want to know.

I completed and e-filed multiple federal returns, which worked great, and the e-file charge was reasonable ($15.95). However, I don't suggest having the e-file charge taken out of your refund. Apparently, there's an extra charge (I think $25) for this service. It's more efficient and less expensive to just pay the fee with a credit card.

Now to the software itself. I found it easy to navigate and enter information. I was a bit disappointed in the deduction section. Many of the fields were too short for me to enter complete names and addresses of charities, which I found frustrating. However, the calculations were accurate. I checked Taxcut's calculations regarding AMT, and they were excellent (Turbotax's calculations were wrong). In the second return I completed, the taxpayer was eligible for EIC, and Taxcut accurately identified this and did the proper calculations here as well.

Overall, I was very satisfied with the product, and will use it again next year. I will make suggestions to Taxcut, and hope they will improve their support for automatic download of forms and longer fields for charitable deductions. However, even without these changes, the product is an exceptional value.

$8.95 and free accounting software how can you go wrong.

2006-03-03
Does your taxes easily. No extra fluff is needed here. Taxcut standard and money software for free. How could you go wrong.

Very poor software

2006-02-22
I got the hang on the 21% and all they could tell me at tech support is to shut down extra services. Well the only services I had running was the security services (firewall and antivirus). As an experiment I tried loading it on two computers set up identically. On one I shut down the antivirus and on the other I shut down the firewall. Neither would install. So I shut down both on both computers and it installed perfectly on both. I cant believe that they want you to shut down security in order to install. Makes me wonder.."What are they hiding that they dont want me to know about". I checked adaware and a registry cleaner and even ran my AV again and found nothing but still... It makes you wonder. Also the layout is very poor, so buggy they have many, MANY patches and updates. Will not print forms correctly and want to charge you fees to e-file when it is free from the governments. They just want more money.

In my opinion...DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS CRAP. BY THE TIME YOU WASTE YOUR MONEY ON GETTING THIS TO WORK, YOU CAN GET A PROFESSIONAL TO DO IT FOR YOU FOR LESS.

cheap and easy

2006-02-14
I found Taxcut to work very well and was easy to follow. It's hard to bet it at under 9 bucks! I didn't buy the state version because the Michigan state tax form is pretty much a no brainer to fill out since you get very few deductions and once you have your AGI all you have to do is calculate the tax due. I mainly needed a tax program that would figure out if any AMT was due. The IRS paperwork for the AMT is confusing to me and I wanted a program that would do the work for me.

I saw some other posts about people having problems installing taxcut and having it lock up at 21%. On the Taxcut website they talk about not having a certain font package on your computer will cause the lock up. Therefore, I downloaded and installed the font package first. Then I installed Taxcut and away I went. I ran the update manager first which took some time at my painfully slow 28.8 connection, but got through it in about a half hour.

The only reason I do not give it 5 stars is that there are too many commercials for H&R block services and the donations portion was weak because it limited the amount of donation spaces to log in your donations. Therefore, I had to group the donation which was a little bit of a pain and because it thought the donations needed a special form because it exceeded some limits. And for some reason it wanted to know if they donations were post 9/27. This became a slight problem with grouping the donations.

On the positive side I did like the way it logged in any capital gains for stocks or mutual funds.

All that said I was able to do my taxes on a Sunday afternoon rather than over the entire week.

Decent, easy to use tax software

2006-02-06
Purchased this edition of TaxCut last week. On WIN XP2 the software installed cleanly and it downloaded the updates without any issues. I imported last year's data in less than a minute and I had my return completed in less than 1 hour. This includes capital gains/losses, dividends, and AMT calculations. It doesn't get much easier than this.
Yes, you have to download updates. The IRS is still making changes to the tax codes long after this software has to be packaged and sent to the stores. The alternative would be to download the whole package online when you buy it, but wouldn't that take at least as long?

J. Michael Irwin

2007-02-10
I like the way the program goes through the tax forms as if you are interviewing with a tax preparer. However, I think it needs to do a better job of explaining why a tax form cannot be emailed and how to address that issue.

Worthless for complicated tax forms

2006-04-17
TaxCut did not warn me that I needed to fill out additional forms required for taking the exemption for a qualified child, nor did it lead me through the Schedule C like TurboTax does. TurboTax may be more expensive, but it's well worth it to save the headaches that this program caused. If you have complicated tax forms or unusual tax situations (or prefer an intuitive program, rather than something that makes you say "What am I supposed to do next???") stick with TurboTax.

If TaxCut Installation stalls at 21% installed

2006-04-17
TaxCut's website (their telephone customer service was non-existent on this date - hung-up on me twice without every getting a person)is not helpful with this problem. While telephone customer service might be expected to be inundated with calls on the last day for filing - you'd think installation problems would be thorougly documented by the end of tax season for PC's running Windows XP. NOT the case. And if you're encountering this on the last day, try rebooting your Windows XP system, pressing F8 while it's booting to restart in Safe Mode with Networking Option and then proceed with the install. I found this tip on another site and it worked for me. The font and Flash upgrades mentioned with this problem in other threads hear on Amazon - didn't help me.

Also after you've completed the return - you won't be able to submit it or print other than in draft form until you upgrade Taxcut - which I wasn't able to do within the program. I had to exit, go to the website, and download directly from their website. I found the website using Google and searching by Taxcut upgrade. Once the install upgrade was run and I reopened Taxcut it allowed me to print the final version of my tax return. I didn't want to attempt the online return and the print out was manageable for both federal and state and a lot cheaper mailing even at the two ounce rate than paying $15.95.

Hope this helps someone today.

Taxcut bug

2006-03-22
This program has a bug in processing 1099-R data that makes the whole software package useless to me. After filling in the data from my 2005 1099-R form, the program informed me that these monies were taxable in 2003 not 2005, and that these data would not be included in my 2005 return. I could not find a way overide this problem. Also, there was no apparent way to directly contact H&R Block to find out how to fix it. After wasting a couple of hours I now have to trash the taxcut software and spend more money to purchase turbo-tax, which from prior years experience is relatively bug free.

Installation hang @ 21% mmvdpro.swf

2006-03-17
This hang happened everytime I tried to install the program. I went to Taxcut.com for customer support and they had a link that said the problem was with fonts used on the program. They gave me a patch that did nothing. The problem still happened. So I read the reviews on this site and one person had the very correct idea of installing or updating your shock wave flash player. After thinking about it, this made perfect sense, look at the extension that hangs: swf. This worked perfectly. Thank you to that person. But why on earth would taxcut try to give people a font patch that doesn't even solve the real problem. Don't bother with that patch and just update your flash player.