Tax Time is Fun with Quicken TurboTax
Written: Feb 14 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Intuitive, inexpensive and fast
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: If you've ever been confused when doing taxes, use TurboTax. It honestly makes tax preparation fun!
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| Beauregard's Full Review: Quicken TurboTax |
Last year I had a good experience with H&R Block's online tax return software, but it was a slow experience. This year I turned toward the more popular Quicken TurboTax. And, boy am I glad I did!
TurboTax is the definition of easy. From opening the site and registering to filing my taxes electronically, only 1.5 hours elapsed. And that's for federal and state! I'm married, have a child, a house, capital gains, charitable deductions and a host of other factors, and TurboTax accounted for them all.
You're led through a series of questions that give hints to the most common answer if it's an odd question and when necessary, a screen pops up for you to fill out. The lines you fill out always correspond to the form number you have in front of you -- your W-2, or 1099-MISC, or 1098 Interest or whatever you may have. So, you simply match line for line. You never have to do ANY math, the program does it for you.
And, when you're all done, TurboTax will ask if you want it to scan your answers to check for common errors or things that may trigger an audit. I answered yes, and it pulled up a capital gains listing where I had put the wrong date for a stock sale vs. the buy. I listed I had sold it before I bought it. I never would have caught that on my own. And, it reminded me that I needed to have a detailed receipt for the clothing/furniture donation I made that was over $500.
I accessed TurboTax via a 56K modem, connected at about 41.2K and the pages flew after the initial minute long download.
And, the best part about this is that you don't have to pay them anything until you file or you print the results. So, if you by chance don't like the program, there's no risk in trying it out.
I also enjoyed that the program remembered where you last were and logs you back into that exact spot if you leave the program. And, although I went through the program in a linear fashion, you do have the ability to jump around. TurboTax keeps a check box list of the sections you've completed if you do it this way. For instance, if you want to list all your capital gains/losses activity first, then the W-2 info, that's just fine.
And, for the curious, TurboTax keeps a running total of the return or payment in the upper right hand corner of the screen. You're able to see what each input does to that total. Pretty neat.
I have to admit my FAVORITE part was how easy TurboTax made my state taxes. You see, after completing your Federal taxes, the system has 95% of the info already handy. I only had to input 2 additional things to complete my state taxes. So, the whole thing took 1.5 hours, but my state taxes only took 10 minutes of that.
When you confirm you want to file the taxes electronically, Quicken will ask for credit card information to pay for the use of TurboTax. Both Federal and State cost me a total of $25. What a fabulous experience.
Fast, easy, fun. I highly recommend this to everyone. No matter if you've got a highly complicated situation like home sale, divorce, inheritance, self employment, it really doesn't matter. Quicken can account for that.
WONDERFUL!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Beauregard
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 - Top 500 |
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Location: Portland, Oregon
Reviews written: 129
Trusted by: 129 members
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