whitestick said:
Guess I'm a bit behind the times. What mistakes/errors did TT have last year, that were known. I downloaded the latestest patches around April 1 before filing, do that every year, 'cause it seems I'm always getting in late 1099s that cause me to have to redo the last little bit. Were there errors still present in TT after the April 1 download.
I can't tell the "IRS form updates" from the "bug fixes", and think Intuit likes it that way.
I didn't have any problems with Turbotax this year and the results looked fine (both for our fed & state tax returns, our kid's too). Usually if there's a significant problem then CNET and the tax websites are all over it.
When I exited the program and restarted it, earlier versions of TT used to pick up on the exact screen I left off. For some reason this year with our federal retun, TT would reset to the beginning and walk through a dozen verification & review screens before getting back to the exit point. If you didn't remember each response exactly the same as you had before (sometimes requiring research to remember what the heck you'd said before) then you'd be down a side road re-doing some data entry. After a couple times I left the program running for the rest of the week that it took to finish the return.
TT must have a heckuva time keeping up with the states. For two years in a row now it's essentially told me "We don't include form N334. You have to go find it, complete it, enter the result into our software, and include the form when you mail in your return. Since we don't include the form in our program then you can't e-file and we can't charge you $16 for it." Form N334 is Hawaii's tax credits for energy improvements like solar water heating, wind, & photovoltaics. Since Hawaii has the nation's largest per-capita solar water heating use, with as many as one-third of this year's filers filling out that form, you'd think TT would take a little time to blow the code to allow them to collect more e-filing fees. I can see getting surprised the first year, but after the second year?
Every year I enter a bunch of stock & fund transactions and when it's Schedule D time I swear that next year I'm going to do less trading. This year it finally happened...
whitestick said:
Wouldn't they have to stand behind them, per their guarentee - not sure if that means they pay then penalty or not, if there is one.
You would think so, but it'd probably be difficult to collect. I've never read anything about Turbotax filing errors or payouts, and they probably use confidentiality agreements to keep it quiet.