If you own a home, made donations or have medical expenses, TurboTax Deluxe will easily get you every tax deduction you deserve. Includes free state preparations and Federal e-File—receive IRS confirmation and get your refund in as fast as 8 days. State e-File available in certain states for an additional fee.Best Features:- TurboTax Deluxe guides you step-by-step to your maximum refund.
- Checks for accuracy and uncovers 350+ deductions and credits including mortgage interest & charitable contributions.
- Audit Risk Meter helps you reduce your chance of an audit.
- Guides you through changes in your tax situation and shows you how they will impact your taxes.
- 5 Free Federal E-File and included TurboTax State download product.
Updated software - no new tricks, but no hidden fees this year either By G. Madeja
The software is about the same as it has been in years' past. And, as in years' past, if you have not strictly set up your Quicken categories the way TurboTax expects to see them, you will experience some incorrect entries when you import from Quicken. Similarly, TurboTax does a pitiful job importing stock option trades from Quicken, primarily using the real Date Acquired info as the Date Sold and then leaving the Date Acquired field blank, so you have to manually go in and change these 2 dates for each of your transactions. Still, it eventually gets the job done and is much easier than trying to fill out paper forms. And I guess I have just become numb to the cutesy "We just saved you $7 in taxes!" gibberish and the plugs to upgrade to a more expensive version every time you have a tax circumstance that would prompt Intuit to want you to upgrade.
As an aside, I too would like to know how two reviewers who were Intuit beta testers came up with identically worded phrases in their reviews.My Past Issues w/ TurboTax - - Creeping State Prices By Brookworld
I've been using TT since it was released in DOS, and as part of the installed base, have stuck with it since.
Quite frankly, tax software is now indepensable for me - - - transfer of profile info to the new year, transfer of state carryover payments, carry forward losses, IRA cummulative contributions, etc., integration with State filings, etc. It cuts down the overhead time.
The Question & Answer format continues, and it seems to be a good approach to cover your tax situation. It allows you to "explore on your own" any topic. The sequencing is unchanged -- personal info, income, deductions & credits, and error checking. My advance edition software is really just a template to carry over your previous data from the 2009 filings and an update checker - - as of now (01/10/2011), my tax reforming forms won't arrive until end of January and many IRS still need to be released as 2010 versions. With significant Federal incentive tax changes (like 1st time house credit, green energy credits, etc.) and last minute tax changes in 50 states, I'm sure the Intuit progarmmers are hard at work updating Fed & State forms and schedules. Any TT version you buy and updated in early 2011 will continue to show the "Do Not File" watermark on any return you produce until later in January.
Although I don't remember compared to 2009, the 2010 version will show 2009 numbers side-by-side with 2010 in many places if you import 2009 data to your 2010 file; it helps to give you a visual look at year-to-year variances and perhaps prompt you to do some error-checking on your own.
Last year, I began using the uploading feature that uploads reporting documents/numbers from many financial institutions & payroll processors (like 1099's, W-2, etc.). It's a big convenience but I have a concern on privacy as you have to disclose a lot of confidential data for TT to enter the portals of the FI's and processors. You have to trust TT to dispose of your data once it enter the portals.
In previous years, I had several serious issues w/ TT.
In the California (CA) state from around 2004-2006, it would not transfer my Federal capital losses to Form 540 which has various CA income adjustments such as interest on Federal debt, state debt interest, special CA IRA treatment, etc. Instead, TT added back my Federal carryover capital losses that were used in my Fed Form 1040. This happened for several years but seemed to have been fixed in recent years. I didn't catch this TT error until years later and then I filed a CA 540X to claim the capital losses which amounted to several $thousands in CA tax refund.
In filing Amended CA tax, the older years were very clunky to use -- it was manual, but TurboTax gave me good access to the downloard versions of state software that I purchased on-line years ago but no longer on my current PC. The newer years for State (calif), beginning 2008, were much easier to use when doing amended returns.
I used New York (NY) TT before 2004 and found that the state software did NOT use the HIGHER of standard Deduction and Itemized Deduction. Because NY is a high income tax state, I normally itemized in my Fed 1040, but NY state income tax is not deductible in NY, so typically for me Standard NY Deduction is higher than my Fed Itemized (minus state income tax for NY filing), but TT would transfer my Fed Itemized status to NY. I had to OVERRIDE NY TT to in order to use the higher Standard NY Deduction which resulted in $hundreds of lower NY tax.
Both the above demonstate TT quality assurance is not sufficient.
Creeping State Version price --
Although a State version is packaged w/ most of TT's Federal versions, have you noticed that pricing for a 2nd State is creeping up -- if you work in NY and live in NJ or CT (or DC/VA/MD), have income from a non-resident state, or moved, you will need to buy a 2nd state. The State version used to cost $19.95, then went to $24.95/$29,95 and it's now $39.95 for the 2010 -- can you feel their figurative hand on private parts ?67 of 74 Probably the best there is - but room for improvement By A. Wiersch
This review is for TuboTax 2010 Deluxe for Federal Returns. Fortunately I live in Texas and there is no state income tax so I don't have to worry about the state portion.
TurboTax has had its share of issues but I came back to it because it does seem to be the best there is, but I'm knocking off a star because of the history of issues I've had with the program in previous years (like it not calculating tax correctly until I deleted some assets and then re-entered them). However, I was a little shocked to read that it requires 500MB of HD space PLUS up to 620MB more if Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1 is not installed (Mac is only 255MB). Wow! That could be over 1GB to do taxes. How inefficient we have become!
Fortunately the system requirements says it works on 64-bit systems, but doesn't specifically mention Windows 7 64-bit, but if it works with Vista 64-bit then it should work with Windows 7 64-bit.
I may be working with this to help estimate my 2010 taxes before I pay may Jan 15th estimated tax payment.
NOTE: Deluxe will do a Schedule C just fine, but it may not provide as much help as the Home & Business version. If you have been doing taxes yourself for awhile then you might not need to pay the extra money for the additional help.
I will update this review as I continue to use the product.
Pros:
* Works on 64-bit versions of Windows XP and higher (of course that includes Vista and Windows 7)
* Probably the best tax program there is
* Price includes federal E-File
* Deluxe version can do a Schedule C for the self-employed - but it doesn't provide as much guidance as the Home & Business edition
Cons:
* Not perfect (but how can US taxes ever be perfect)?
* Have encountered bugs in previous years that caused me to have to delete and re-enter assets
* Might take up to 1.12GB of HD space on Windows according to the system requirements The Best-Selling TurboTax Deluxe Federal + e-File + State 2010 - [Old Version] then to sell out very fast, if this is a must have product, be sure to order now to avoid disappointment.
