tax software gripes

[braumeister]

TT is so slow to start! Over 10 Gz of quad core processor power, yet TT takes 50 seconds to load and another 50 seconds to reopen my return for editing. Maybe TT is repeatedly trying to phone home to record use or share my data even though I'm running offline.

Every time it starts up it tries to phone home to see if there have been any updates since it last ran. There usually are.

 

[RunningBum]

It depends on the measure in question. it is going to be tax/taxable income at the simple level, then you could go to agi or even add in tax free. It does appear that TT does the calculation taking at least foreign tax credits off the total.

Right, I don't think there's any real agreement what to include. I also don't think it's a very important measurement, other than to understand that you aren't paying all your taxes on the highest bracket you touch, so I'm not going to debate what the right formula is. TurboTax does highlight this, which was my point in response to LOL's complaint that tax software programs hide this. H&R Block doesn't have this cover page and I can't recall if they put this elsewhere.

I think it's more important to know what that last dollar is taxed at, so you understand the effect of deferring another $1000 or converting another $1000 to a Roth--is it saving you or taxing you 15%, 25%, or whatever, and is it going to push or pull more LTCGs and divs into being taxed or not.

 

[RunningBum]

Every time it starts up it tries to phone home to see if there have been any updates since it last ran. There usually are.

My solution to this is to keep the program open over the days or weeks while I'm working on taxes. I put my laptop to sleep rather than shutdown when I'm not using it, and I make sure to save my tax work when I'm done for a session. Before my taxes are finalized the program always does a last check for updates. My return is fairly simple and I don't start with the earliest version of the year, so I'm not really worried about updates changing what I've done.

 

[misanman]

TT is so slow to start! Over 10 Gz of quad core processor power, yet TT takes 50 seconds to load and another 50 seconds to reopen my return for editing. Maybe TT is repeatedly trying to phone home to record use or share my data even though I'm running offline.

I agree it's a bit slow - just put a stopwatch on my old desktop PC and it took 15 sec to load and 15 seconds to load my return. Not sure what could make your's 3 times slower.

 

[GrayHare]

I agree it's a bit slow - just put a stopwatch on my old desktop PC and it took 15 sec to load and 15 seconds to load my return. Not sure what could make your's 3 times slower.

The difference may be version related. Deluxe is much slower than Home and Business. Neither should be phoning home since I have told the software to not get updates unless I specifically invoke them.

 

[misanman]

The difference may be version related. Deluxe is much slower than Home and Business. Neither should be phoning home since I have told the software to not get updates unless I specifically invoke them.

I'm using TT Premier with one state (Michigan)

 

[sengsational]

My beef with tax software is that the companies that sell such software want you to be completely dependent on their software.

Nobody can argue with this!

I don't know about TT, but Block has no export feature. The competition is forced to interpret PDF's if they want to import last year's data.

I thought I'd outsmart them and "print to text". Well, they thought of that; they threw in bunches of control characters to prevent that from being a poor-man's export.

Oh, and here's one that also gets me steamed: you can't select a number and hit "control-C" to copy it. REALLY?

I put up with this cr*p, but it doesn't mean I like it.

 

[braumeister]

The competition is forced to interpret PDF's if they want to import last year's data.

TurboTax does a great job of importing a pdf tax return. I've done it several times.

 

[samclem]

Nobody can argue with this!

I don't know about TT, but Block has no export feature. The competition is forced to interpret PDF's if they want to import last year's data.

Are you looking for a CSV format or something similar? I can't see why they'd invest the time to do that. Each company seems to use their proprietary file format for saving the data. I'd say it makes for sense that the onus should be on the "gaining" software to be able to import from these various proprietary formats.

 

[dixonge]

First year with TT - fairly impressed! However, some of that might be because I somehow ended up with a refund of about 96% of all withholding. I'm using the online version.

 

[Sunset]

I'm using H&R Block, get to the e-filing part and it fails saying my code is wrong.

When I installed it, it showed a code which I put in. I thought the code was a little stupid, but since I bought it from Amazon and had not registered it, I thought it was how they did it.

I checked my purchase emails and sure enough there was a code which worked.

However, I think it's pretty misleading to show a code when installing it that is fake, instead they should have said look in your email for a 8 character code.

 

[Dawg52]

My solution to this is to keep the program open over the days or weeks while I'm working on taxes. I put my laptop to sleep rather than shutdown when I'm not using it, and I make sure to save my tax work when I'm done for a session. Before my taxes are finalized the program always does a last check for updates. My return is fairly simple and I don't start with the earliest version of the year, so I'm not really worried about updates changing what I've done.

Good tip. That's what I plan to do from now on. Yesterday I got started on my taxes(TT Premier) and it was slow updating and getting to a starting point of my return. Just brought it up today and it took several minutes to update and get to my return. Fine once in. Maybe some system auto updates were running that slowed it. I rarely use this laptop anymore as I have a Chrome I use for daily web surfing. But it's not that old.....maybe 3 years.

I wondered if it was just me.....looks like others having similar problems.

 

[Sunset]

I use taxCut, and turn off the tax software "check for updates automatically" option.

I just manually activate the check for update when I'm going to start a new return, or some other time when convenient.

 

[Car-Guy]

Personally, I like TT. (But I don't like some of their sales tactics of the past) I use the Premiere edition and have found it very easy to use and jump around to work on whatever I like. I like to understand the taxes, so I'll do the research necessary to feel comfortable with why I'm paying what I am. I can do the calculations if needed but am perfectly happy letting TT do it for me.

I usually do my taxes in "draft" form by mid February, and will check and update it a few times before I finally send it in sometimes in early April. I always seem to find a few things to update/change and since I don't pay anymore taxes in advance than I need to, I tend to send in a check to cover the difference so there is no sense in sending it in early.

Every so often, TT will seem to add things up differently than I expect and "so far" it because of an input error on my part. Sure beats filling out all the stupid forms by hand "several times".

 

[JoeWras]

Every so often, TT will seem to add things up differently than I expect and "so far" it because of an input error on my part. Sure beats filling out all the stupid forms by hand "several times".

I help a nonprofit fill out their 990 form. They have no tax software to do this. (And TT won't do it, it is essentially a business form.)

I have found out what suffering occurs when filling out the form "several times." I even use the fill-able PDF files available from the IRS, and updating those several times (and calculating by hand, or transferring from my shadow spreadsheet) is a pain.

I really have no desire to do my taxes by hand. Tax software is well worth it.

 

[jebmke]

I use taxCut, and turn off the tax software "check for updates automatically" option.

I just manually activate the check for update when I'm going to start a new return, or some other time when convenient.

March is often a time when tax software gets fixed. By then enough early filers have done all the quality assurance and found many of the errors. State income tax calculations and forms are particularly buggy in the early weeks for filing season. Some vendors even have forms missing from their February releases.

I don't normally file until September but in any case, I recommend running the update routine before finalizing the return and transmitting just in case something got fixed between the time you started the return and the time you filed it.

 

[gerntz]

AGI/total tax

Nope. It's

Total tax/MAGI

 

[Fedup]

I usually run the update when I'm nearly done. I save it first before I do the update. Just in case something is wrong. I can go back.

 

[ERD50]

...
I even use the fill-able PDF files available from the IRS, and updating those several times (and calculating by hand, or transferring from my shadow spreadsheet) is a pain.

I really have no desire to do my taxes by hand. Tax software is well worth it.

Yes, but I wish there was an in-between option. The tax SW has become too 'black box' for me at times. I recently wanted to verify something, I knew I should be all in the 15% bracket at this point, so I changed an input by $200, expecting a $30 change in tax. Nope!

Now, try to find out why. It was really, really hard. There is a worksheet that it used wasn't in any printouts, it was all calculated internally. That worksheet is just in the Fed's 1040 instructions, I had to download and do it manually to see if the issue was there.


Hmmm, some guy was offering a free spreadsheet that handled a lot of cases, I need to look for that. It's nice to just enter the stuff, I know how to do that, and see the calculation. At least in parallel with the SW.

ETA: Here it is - I have not used it yet, so proceed with caution... https://sites.google.com/site/excel1040/

-ERD50

 

[kgtest]

move twice with home offices in different states. TT doesn't like half percentages so you need to sort of round up or down if you have three offices in different states.

That year my taxes were over 100 pages