Guidance for all your personal tax situations. Federal forms. Step-by-step interviews guide you through a customized experience relevant to your tax situation. Everything you need to prepare your federal taxes in one complete program.Best Features:- H&R Block At Home Basic includes everything you need to easily complete your federal taxes, plus five free federal e-files
- Customized interview process helps you easily complete your federal taxes; ideal for simple tax situations and easy for first-time users
- Easily import W-2, 1099, and data from last year's return; quickly import data from TaxCut, TurboTax, Quicken, and Microsoft Money software
- Automatically double-checks returns for errors; built-in expertise and audit support with guidance
- Five free federal e-files included--get your refund in as few as eight days
Buggy installation/permissions on Macs: I have the problem & the solution By Allan Ray Miller
There are two bugs that affect H&R Block At Home 2009 for some Apple Mac users. Since both problems prevent customers from updating the program from the H&R Block web servers, customers must correct both problems manually before any updates from H&R Block are possible. I already discussed this in the Comments section on John Young's review, however I realize that not everyone follows the Comments link, plus this new description is more concise. So you get it again.
Who it affects: Mac customers who both: 1) have multiple login accounts on the Mac and 2) attempt to run H&R Block At Home 2009 from a non-admin account.
Problem #1: During the installation process the initial update fails due to file permissions. Error message is: "1008:5,-5000 Access denied error. You do not have enough access privileges for this installation"
Resolution: 1) Stop the program installation and log in under the admin account, 2) open a Finder window, 3) open the Applications folder, 4) uninstall the H&R Block 2009 program by dragging the icon to the Trash, 5) in the Finder window open the Utilities folder, 6) run the Disk Utility program, 7) select your hard drive as the disk upon which to operate, 8) click on the "Repair Disk Permissions" button and wait for that process to complete, 9) reinstall the H&R Block 2009 program under the admin account.
Problem #2: When running H&R Block 2009 using a non-admin login account, the program crashes immediately upon launch due to file permissions. Error message is: "Initialization Failed. Exception thrown during initialization: File open failed. File = /Users/Shared/H&R Block/2009/update.tim in open:MacFileWriterImpl"
Resolution: 1) Exit the program and log in under the admin account, 2) open a Finder window, 3) open the Macintosh HD icon, 4) open the Users folder, then the Shared folder, then the H&R Block folder, 5) right-click on the 2009 folder, 6) select "Get Info" on the menu, 7) on the pop-up window in the "Sharing & Permissions" section set ALL permissions that say "Read Only" to instead say "Read & Write", 8) return to the Finder window and open the 2009 folder, 9) right-click on the update.tim file, 10) select "Get Info" on the menu, 11) on the pop-up window in the "Sharing & Permissions" section set ALL permissions that say "Read Only" to instead say "Read & Write".
Upon successful resolution of both of these problems the customer will be able to run H&R Block 2009 from a non-admin account to do their taxes. As of the date of this note however (1/22/2010) all program updates must still be made using the admin account.
I discovered and diagnosed this on my own machine. Fortunately I'm a geek and so was able to figure out the problem & share it with others. Obviously H&R Block did not test this scenario before they shipped the program. Dunno if a similar problems exists on Windows machines. Also dunno if there will be further problems when I download & install the State program. I haven't gotten that far yet.
UPDATE Problem #3: I installed the Maryland state program tonight (1/27) when it became available for download. Given the problems above I used the admin account to do the install and then switched back to my normal account. Ran the program: no Maryland state tax program installed! And you're only allowed to download it one time without paying again! Turns out the state program downloads into the directory ~/Library/Application Support/H&RBlock/2009/ (for non-techies ~ means starting at your home directory) and a non-shared plugin is created. This thwarts other accounts from using the state program.
Resolution: Using a Finder window in the admin account copy the file ~/Library/Application Support/H&RBlock/2009/Completed Updates/md.dmg (for other states replace md.dmg with your state's abbreviation e.g. va.dmg for Virginia.) Paste this into a shared directory such as Macintosh HD/Users/Shared. Go back into your normal account and copy that same file from the Shared directory into your own ~/Library/Application Support/H&RBlock/2009/Completed Updates/ directory. Double click on that file (md.dmg in my case.) A new window will pop up and you'll see a new file which starts with your state's two-letter abbreviation. In my case it was called MD.TCstate09. Double click on that file. Another window will pop up which says it is installing the state plug-in. After that, you'll be able to use the state program under your normal user account as you intended.
Don't ask me how to update all of this mess at this point when H&R Block is ready to push out new program updates. Do you use the admin account? The user account? Who knows? It might even depend upon whether you are updating the Federal or the State return. What a mess!
H&R Block really blew it this year on multi-user account support, at least on the Macs. I tried relaying this to their Customer Service (3 phone calls and 2 online Chat sessions) but they had no one who understood the Macs and no way for me to email to them my diagnosis and solutions. They were nice and tried to be helpful but I'm not sure they got exactly what I was saying. I hope so though.
I have liked H&R Block in the past and they are cheaper than TurboTax. This year, however, makes it difficult to remain a loyal customer. We'll see what I do in tax year 2010.
Anyway, I hope my pain is able to help other Mac users get up and running.Good enough By Alan W. Harris
Having used TaxCut Basic last year, I received two CD copies in the mail of this year's tax program from H&R Block, but both keyed to the "Premium" level program, at "premium" price. For me, all I am looking for is the equivalent of a spreadsheet that propagates entries into all the relevant forms and schedules and does the sums. The "Basic" level program is good enough for that, even though my return is fairly complex; it covers all forms and schedules for federal filing. The difficulty is getting one's hands on the "Basic" version, H&R Block is so aggressive in peddling the higher level programs that it can be difficult finding the "Basic" version -- thanks, Amazon.
An annual annoyance is state returns. For most states, mine (California) included, filing state taxes is so simple, once the Federal is done, and so automated on the state web site, that I don't waste money on state tax options. Too bad H&R Block and TurboTax don't price their state products closer to what they're worth. In the meantime, I just waste some paper and file by mail.Good basic functionality if you can get it to install By Charles P. Dyer
HR Block's tax apps have historically had problems installing and updating, especially on Macs. This year's version is worse than last year's.
1 I tried to install it on a Mac first. It refused to run properly, because the account I was using was not an admin account. I got it to run by switching to an admin account. This is the same behavior as it had shown last year and the year before that and the year before that, and was not a surprise. I'd reported the problem to the vendor last year, not really expecting them to change. They didn't. Memo to HR Block: It's good practice to _not_ use an admin account to run normal activities. Yes, Apple will let you set up an admin account to run normally. Yes, Microsoft will make it difficult to run under a standard account. And, yes, prudent security practice would be to _not use an admin account as the normal account_. And this goes double or triple for when you're running financial software... such as, well, tax software. I will be reporting the problem to HR Block again this year. I expect that they will continue to ignore me.
2 after it installed on the Mac I tried to update it. I have my personal Mac configured in two partitions, the Mac OS X partition (formatted HFS+ Journaled, as is standard) and a Boot Camp partition with Vista SP2 installed on a NTFS volume. I have several external drives connected to my Mac, by FireWire and USB, and I have some other items connected over my home network. The brain-damaged updater that HR Block uses insists on searching _each and every volume mounted on the filesystem_ before doing the update. This includes the NTFS partition, and the network volumes. It took literally four hours 37 minutes to search the NTFS partition. (I timed it.) This is actually slower than last year, when it only took three hours plus. (That's why I timed it this time...) I can unmount the external drives, I can unmount the network volumes, but I _can't_ unmount the Boot Camp partition... and no other installer wastes its time searching the Boot Camp partition for stuff that should only be found on the boot volume. Memo to HR Block: it might be a good idea to find a Mac update installer that isn't brain-dead. Doing something simple, such as ignoring NTFS partitions on the Mac side, or letting the customer uncheck volumes to be searched, might be a Good Idea.
3 I called HR Block's customer service while this was going on. They were clueless, same as last year. Two different CS reps didn't know that it was possible to install Windows on a Mac, either in a Boot Camp partition or using a VM. One tried to tell me that what I was doing was impossible. The other one seemed to be under the impression that I was installing the app on the Mac side so that I could use it on the Windows side. Memo to HR Block: training your CS staff on how Macs work would be a Good Idea.
4 while the updater was running on the Mac I dug out my Windows laptop and installed the app there. I then updated it, and despite the fact that the laptop was connected to the same network volumes (and to the Mac!) the updater ran quickly and confined its search to logical places. This was a Good Thing, as it turns out...
5 the app found the copy of my last year's return that I'd copied over to the laptop and loaded it and got me started on my return. I was able to finish my return before the updater on the Mac was finished. (Memo to HR Block: you've really got to do something about that updater...) and that's when I found out that apparently when it found that copy of my last year's return, it loaded it up into the new return... and _then deleted the old one_. I needed something from the old one which wasn't available in the new one, and I couldn't find the old one anywhere on my system. I'd put my last four year's returns into a folder named 'Taxes' on my Mac, and had copied that folder over to the laptop. The folder was still there, the return for the year before last and the two years before that were still there... but last year's return was gone. Missing. History. Fortunately I still had it on the Mac, so I copied it over again, ran last year's HR Block app (which tried to update despite being a year old) got the required info and entered it into the new return. If I hadn't had multiple copies of my stuff spread over several machines I'd have been in big trouble. (Well, I'd have had to actually dig up the paper version and type stuff in, but the whole point behind having electronic records is so I don't have to do that...) Memo to HR Block: maybe it would be a Good Idea to _not delete the old return_?
Now, once I got it to behave it worked. It's just that I shouldn't have had to go to all this trouble to get it to work. The Best-Selling H&R Block At Home 2009 Basic Federal + eFile [Formerly TaxCut] then to sell out very fast, if this is a must have product, be sure to order now to avoid disappointment.
