TurboTax Versus TaxCut

[obiwan]

Just did a quick site search, and can't find that this has been a topic of discussion:

After using TurboTax for a couple of years, I switched to H&R Block's TaxCut about five years ago and haven't been disappointed. It's met every federal & state tax need we've had, and "so far, so good".

Thankfully, the BW slides into retirement this year (I ER'd in 2001), and we're wondering whether TurboTax - which a lot of you seem to use - has advantages for ER'ees reporting the types of income (K1s, 1099Rs, etc.) & deductions that we're about to "enjoy".

Opinions?

 

[Nords]

I think these debates are all pretty much the same:
TurboTax vs TaxCut
Rent vs own
Mortgage vs debt-free
Stocks vs bonds
Active management vs index funds
Windows vs Mac
Designated hitter vs no DH
Tastes great vs less filling.

I haven't noticed any differences in the process of doing our taxes before or after retirement. We have more free time to get it done but we still wait until the last minute for fear of 1099 revisions. (And welcome to the world of K-1s, which are timed to arrive the day AFTER you file!)

I believe TaxCut is usually less expensive, but then TurboTax works very hard at a rebate system that ensures no user pays the same price for their software.

 

[obiwan]

Stick vs Automatic
Graphite vs Steel
Top vs Bottom
Ford vs Chevy
3-4 vs 4-3 defense
Cable vs Satellite

But, DH vs no DH? No question - let the pitchers hit! Ask the Rocket...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

You're almost right Nords.

Macs suck!

 

[Nords]

Macs suck!

You're just jealous at having to work at the Wintel cooperative for all those years and not being able to get any of your paychecks from the Church of Macintology...

 

[nuisance]

This isn't a very informed opinion, more a rant. I've used TurboTax on the web the last few years and it's always been very easy and from what I recall, reasonably priced. Yesterday I wrapped up my taxes and they suddenly hit me up for $70. Maybe I'm misremembering what it cost in previous years, but next year I'll be sure to consider my alternatives.

Tim

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

You're just jealous at having to work at the Wintel cooperative for all those years and not being able to get any of your paychecks from the Church of Macintology...

Nah, I speak from experience. Bought the wife a mac a couple of years ago. Made some sense, she used a lot of digital photography, digital camcorder, did a lot with music. PC's sucked at multimedia...you could buy a sony machine with 43 different software packages soldered together with baling wire, but the mac was (and is) pretty cool as far as multimedia software implementations go.

After purchase, I was disappointed. The modem was a crappy softmodem that underperformed the nice 3com hardware modem in her old pc on the bad phone lines in her neighborhood. The maxtor disk drive started whining after a year - what do they expect with passive cooling? The cool trayless cd 'slotdrive' stopped sucking in cd's after about a year. The OS X I had bought with the unit turned out to be largely beta code, and I had to pay $30 to get the 'real thing' when 10.1 came out, but that had problems too, so I was supposed to pay more for 10.2. Gave up, sold it, bought another PC. Windows XP with movie maker, media player and the camera wizard appears to have closed the gap with OS X as far as multimedia ease of use.

In all, I was unimpressed, but I recognized that I had been sold the 'sizzle' for a premium price and gotten a pedestrian hardware platform with very good software out of it.

Back on topic, I've used both turbotax and taxcut, they both work fine. I've stuck with turbotax because I get the 'staples' 12 step deal every year where I end up getting the federal, state and quicken software, with efiling, for free after rebates, coupons and gift cards.

Free is good. My second favorite four letter word...