Customer Reviews
Avoid the frustration 
2008-03-28
This review is in reference to the 1041 and related forms. Instead of buying this program just use the forms on the IRS website, because Taxcut's help menu will send you there anyway. The "walk through interview" is a joke. Navigating thru the forms is very cumbersome and heaven forbid if you incorrectly enter anything and try to correct it. I talked to someone at H&R Select and they informed me that the program assumes you have a certain level of knowledge to use the program (like your Masters in accounting?). They also informed me they do not use the program. So I thought I would be generous and give it a one star rating.
2007 Tax Cut 
2008-03-24
About 4 years ago I switched from Turbo Tax to Tax Cut and have never looked back. I find Tax Cut to be a complete and comprehensive product, easy to install and use.
What Happened?!?!?! 2008-03-18
Last year I used Tax Cut and it worked brilliantly. This year was painful beyond belief. Buttons would route to incorrect places, the program would not route to errors, nor would it let you access locations of some errors yet would not let you proceed without correcting the errors. On-line support was not even close to helpful. Most concerningly is the excessive number of times the program required me to input my banking information, only to have to repeat it again after the "next" button kicked me somewhere unexpected. I severely regret ever hearing of this supposed tax prep "service".
Next year TurboTax 2008-03-12
I have been a TaxCut fan for 3 years and now wish that I have never heard about this software product. If you have a Vista operating system, do yourself a favor and do not buy this product. It has been a nightmare! I have been working with the taxcut people for TWO months. I have been waiting so long, that they offered me a free "key" code for the online system and so I spent a couple of days completing my return and then went to file and found out that the key code doesn't work. I have been on hold for hours and no one seems to care.
BEWARE: 3rd Party Purchase = NO Support 2008-02-29
Like many others, I've used TaxCut for a number of years. This year, I chose to buy TaxCut Home/Business from the cheapest site recommended by PriceGrabber, a site with a very good rep. The product arrived fine but when I went to install it, it just hung at the Setup Files point. Yes, I disabled anti-v and even the firewall; no joy. OK, call H&R. First round, load some VB Run stuff off the cd, reboot, try again. No joy. Call H&R w/case number given from first call. Told that it was not supported because purchase was not made from them. Told them I would provide copy of my invoice as proof of purchase. They said no way they can receive such. Well, this means they do not stand behind their product and therefore I will not buy TaxCut in the future. I'm not a fan of TurboTax either but with the proverbial rock and hard place, I'm leaving the rock and going to the hard place until I find a suitable alternative to the "big 2".
Serious problems 2008-04-29
I've been using TC for about 15 years. During this time my returns have become increasingly complex as my business has expanded (sole proprietorships, office buildings) and my personal situation has changed (elderly parents needing assistance, children in/out of college/jobs). TC has been able to handle most of this, but this year I ran into some serious problems. Here they are:
1. It's always difficult to coax TC into calculating Fed estimated taxes for the new tax year. This problem continues.
2. Whenever hypertext or help is selected, the program responds with a script error. The help screen can be accessed, but the script error message must first be cleared. This becomes increasingly annoying as the return is prepared, but not fatal.
3. The worst problem this year involved making and editing itemized lists. I use this feature a lot so that the next tax year it can guide my entries based on the previous year. This way I don't have to re-study the help screens to decide whether this or that item is considered an 'office supply' or 'misc expense'; whether an item should be put on Sched E as a rental expense or on Sched C as a business expense, etc. I had finished about 75% of my Fed return and suddenly TC would crash whenever I tried to edit or modify an existing itemized list. I went back and tried to edit a number of lists, but couldn't view the lists and TC crashed and closed each time.
I contacted HRBlock via chat to determine how to fix this. After the usual waiting..........explaining...............I was told that this problem was not new and that the fix was simple. All I had to do was discard the 07 return, go back to the 06 return and delete-item by item- all of the itemized lists in that return, re-import the 06 return to the 07 return, and then just re-enter all of the data into the new 07 return........... DISCARD WHAT NOW? GO BACK WHERE NOW? This is an ENTIRELY UNSATISFACTORY solution, I said. Re-creating the 07 return would take days, what other solutions are there? None!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I checked over and printed out the 07 return and found that the lists were still intact (but inaccessible to editing) and that the calculations based on the lists were correct. So I just completed the return workng around the list editing problem.
This is an awful problem. I don't know what will happen when I try to import this 07 return into the 08 return next year. Will the lists be there or not, will the numbers import properly or not, what will happen?
As a result, I'm seriously considering TurboTax.
Came up short for handling an Estate in PA 2008-04-15
Bought this to do income tax returns to settle an Estate in PA. I easily entered all the info for filing a final joint return, and got through the Federal e-file verification. As I went through the PA e-file verification I got a message that PA does not permit joint returns when one of the parties is deceased ... but then the astonishing remainder of the of the messages ... you have to go back and create separate individual federal returns (but not file them) to use to create the separate PA returns!! It didn't tell me this until AFTER I went through the PA interview! I can't e-file the Federal & PA returns together... so far I haven't figured how to e-file the PA returns because you have to e-file the corresponding e-filed Federal return, but there isn't one. Tried the free TurboTax to see if it could get me around this... couldn't import the 2007 TaxCut data, only 2006. Tried a simulated TurboTax joint Federal with deceased ... the PA gave an upfront warning of the need to file separate PA returns and imported the Federal and allowed creation of a single for the primary filer only (couldn't create the deceased spouse PA forms) ... TurboTax pulled in all of the income and didn't exclude the spouse-only items; there is no easy/obvious way to exclude those items. Tried the free TaxAct and it appears it can't do it right either. So none of these handle PA well for this situation, although TurboTax appears to be a little closer to getting it right.
I bought this TaxCut bundled s/w to also do the Estate 1041 return. It's no where near as helpful as the 1040 interview. It assumes you're familiar with doing a 1041. I had to do much research outside of this s/w to figure out how to properly report things.
TaxAct doesn't offer s/w with the Estate 1041 forms, so I narrowed my choices to TaxCut or TurboTax. Neither of them import TaxAct data, so I had to cut/paste from last year's TaxAct 1040 info. I picked TaxCut over TurboTax simply because of total cost to do 1040 & 1041 forms. By the way, the 1041 is done with the business tax s/w while the 1040 is done with the personal tax s/w and they don't share data ... you can't import 1099 data stored with a 1040 into a 1041 (it would be nice).
This program is a joke 2008-04-13
Warning to all that are considering this program now or in the future. This program is awful from the start. Last year it included the home only disc - they had to send me the full business and home version separately. This year it has wiped out last year's return when it loaded, so not only do I have to reenter all of the data, but I no longer have the 2006 returns available on the computer. I switched from TurboTax a few years ago, and though I did not like that program much, it did not leave me stranded like this one has. This whole thing has me wanting to go all the way back to pen and paper.
Good for very very simple returns 
2008-04-13
I have used TaxCut for 2 years, and it worked well.
This year, I needed to copy information from a Form K1 received from a stock that I owned, and the programs actually said "You'll need to perform some special calculations that we dont cover ... adjust your return as appropriate." It doesnt tell you what calculations you need to do. Chat and voice tech support had problems telling me what I really needed to do to work around this, they kept thinking I needed to file a business partnership return. For this I paid $89 at Best Buy?
As I understand it from research on the web, TaxAct and TurboTax have no problems with this.
Business returns much improved over last year 
2008-04-05
I've found the business returns, subchapter S corps and Estates and Trusts, to be much improved over last year. Instructions really helped on some difficult entries.
On the other hand, the individual 1040 appeared to be overly cluttered with instructions when using the "whole form/form entry" method.
Vista users, well, you have a problem operating system. Don't blame the tax SW. My XP machine functions well, no crashes with this program. Downloads work fine.
For what you pay, you get a heck of a lot with this package of products (individual, business, estates, etc). Much better value than Turbo
Tax.
