TurboTax Rated the Best Tax Prep Software

Written by Nickel - 7 Comments

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Awhile back, I wrote about the best tax prep software. I’ve always been partial to TurboTax, and it seems that I’m not alone… PC Magazine has named TurboTax as it’s Editors’ Choice award winner. Here’s their summary:

TurboTax and H&R Block’s TaxCut wage a mighty battle in the premium personal tax preparation software market every year, with TaxACT mopping up the more budget-conscious and knowledgeable filers. This year, the outcome is the same as in recent years: TurboTax is our Editors’ Choice. Though TaxCut wins points for its more reasonable pricing and remains a formidable foe in terms of functionality, it hasn’t evolved as skillfully as TurboTax has. Both premium apps continue to do a commendable job of exploding the 1040 into palatable chunks that can be more easily digested and processed, but TurboTax — especially in the Premier version — takes apart complex topics and eases you through them with a greater variety of at-the-ready guidance and versatility.

I’ve actually used TurboTax for the past six years (at least), and have been very satisfied with it. Because our taxes have gotten quite complex over the years, I used both TurboTax and a tax pro for our 2006 taxes and the results came out nearly identical, so I’ve fallen back to self-preparing. My only quibble last year was that the AMT documentation was a little sparse, but I muddled through and figured things out just fine.

Also be sure to check out my TurboTax vs. TaxCut comparison.

Source: PC Magazine

Published on February 2nd, 2009 - 7 Comments
Filed under: Taxes
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About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!

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Comments (scroll down to add your own):

  1. Agree that TurboTax is great. The multi-year benefits are helpful – especially if you own rental property – you just import last year’s taxes and take off.

    Also – the It’sDeductible program really opened my eyes at how much clothing could be worth. Just remember to keep a photo of donated items. I take the digital pic and save it to my taxes folder.

    Comment by atty — Feb 2nd 2009 @ 11:32 am

  2. TurboTax is my preferred software. I’ve used TT and Taxcut in the past and for where I am now (house, itemized deductions, etc) TurboTax was much easier.

    Comment by thomas — Feb 2nd 2009 @ 1:06 pm

  3. FYI – Vanguard is offering a 35% discount on TurboTax to account holders right now.

    Comment by OAB — Feb 2nd 2009 @ 2:08 pm

  4. Turbo Tax has a bug, and I already spoke with 3 different ppl from the customer support, which does not have any clue what to do.
    And they constantly redirect me to other ppl.

    The bug is :

    You can’t get the 7500$ tax credit for fist time homebuyers no matter what option you choose from the following options (peraphrased by memory):

    1) Bought my home between april-2008 and december-2008
    2) Bought my home between jan-2009 and juli-2009
    3) None of the above

    No matter what you select at the end you always get (by memory again):

    You don’t qualify for tax credit because you didn’t bough you home between april-2008 and december-2008.

    (or some such)

    Comment by me — Feb 2nd 2009 @ 8:06 pm

  5. I’ve been trying to log into Turbo for two days. Keep getting a 403 forbidden error. I followed all their steps and can’t log in. I used them before. My complaint was about a SSN. when trying to file electronically through them, they said someon already filed. manual filing no problem.

    Comment by cDOG — Feb 3rd 2009 @ 10:05 am

  6. I used Turbotax until this year. I mostly used it as a spreadsheet — that is, I skipped the interview section and went straight to the forms.

    The forms, and the general turbotax interface, have become much harder to navigate and now I can’t recommend turbotax anymore. Plus its price just increased pretty heavily.

    I’m using TaxACT this year and, as PC Magazine says, it’s great for “knowledgeable filers” — if you already know the 1040 basics, it’s fast and simple.

    For what it’s worth, Turbotax cheerfully refunded my purchase this year, no questions asked. So it’s worth a try…

    Comment by Trav — Feb 3rd 2009 @ 1:04 pm

  7. I thought that TurboTax was great stuff, but I had some real surprises this year, specifically with the state portion. I just wrote a pretty lengthy review of TurboTax 2008 on my site, so I won’t repeat it all here.

    As always, caveat emptor!

    Comment by Wise Finish — Feb 14th 2009 @ 8:48 am

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