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(More customer reviews)The section that follows is my first impression of the Business program, generated on January 15. At the end of that, I include my second impression on February 15 of the business program (1120S). I'll include a review of the 1040 portion of this software after I do those taxes. OK, that review is in at the very bottom. I'd rate the 1040 as 4-stars.
Ok, I knew H&R was a little more primitive than TurboTax (which I used for 10 years or so), based on my experience with their personal tax package for 2008 taxes, but it was adequate. So this year I tried the Business software (S corp), the only part of this combo-burrito I've tried so far. It is REALLY primitive:
1. First, don't necessarily expect to be able to make sense of the display! The program may show up on your monitor with the check boxes bearing NO spacial relationship to the actual choices. So you call the help desk, and someone tells you to reset your monitor properties to display 1024x768. Oh and make sure that under "Advanced" the dpi resolution is set to 96. The is the only software I've ever used that couldn't recognize my monitor and display correctly. Massive lameness -- and it took 2 long tech support calls to fix it.
1.5. For a while, tech support thought the software was corrupt. I had registered it but BECAUSE I BOUGHT THE SOFTWARE FROM AMAZON, H&R BLOCK HAD NO RECORD OF MY REGISTRATION. So if the software had actually been bad, they could not have downloaded a clean version -- I would have had to return the box to Amazon for a refund and reorder it!! And the tech support person noted that Amazon would probably not take it back because it had been opened! Be warned -- if you really want this stuff, pay the man and download it from H&R Block.
2. Recognize that tech support people have just been hired and will not really know anything, tho they will be friendly and eager to help. Plan to spend an hour or two with vague directions trying to get where you're trying to go. Cultivate a Zen state of mind...
3. Expect the "interview" questions to be something like: "Did you have any 53(c) sect 89 reclaimable charge-backs loss amortizations for deductible klefnabulator expenses?" When you look for more information, there isn't any. When you check out the IRS instructions, they say (surprise!) exactly what the "interview" question said. TurboTax asks you in English, tells you what the amount applies to, and even tells you how commonly this item is entered.
4. Don't expect the program to be smart about anything. TurboTax figures out that if you don't have deduction A, you can't possibly have B or C, but H&R Block asks you every question.
5. Don't expect to be able to import from QuickBooks or last year's taxes produced by TurboTax. Generate those reports and type in your numbers.
6. Don't expect all the forms to be there -- and don't expect the software to let you know. I tried and tried to get to Form 4562, Amortization and Depreciation, and ended up at several different dead-ends. I again called tech support and talked at length with a guy who took me through more dead-ends before finally discovering that the form "hadn't been released by the IRS yet." You might think the software itself would let you know, but you'd be wrong.
7. To switch between your 1120S and filling out a 1099-misc for a contractor is not intuitive. Another call to tech support. For 20 minutes or so, the guy didn't seem to understand what a 1099 was, or even understand that I was working on an S-Corp return and not a 1040(!). More dead ends. Finally, he got help and told me to close the program and reopen it to get where I wanted to go.
8. I then gave up. I should say that I did all this stuff on Jan 15, which I admit is early in the year. So if things improve markedly, I'll update this review.
9. Meanwhile, based on this experience, I would say that the fact this combination package is about half the price of the separate TurboTax business and personal packages, does NOT make it a good deal! It is easy for me to loath Intuit, but next year I'll most likely be doing business with them again. Sigh.
Here's an business tax update on February 15. The updated software still doesn't recognize my monitor, but at least I knew what to do this time and finished filling out taxes fairly quickly. I have done my own taxes for years and had QuickBooks reports and prior year forms. Dollar-wise, the program is off from what I calculated from QuickBooks by about $104, but at this point I'm not quibbling. Nothing has changed from what I said in January, although it seems that all the forms are now available. The interview still seems quite stupid -- and it makes mistakes: I filled out the tax form for an S corporation, which NEVER pays taxes, and the program asked me how much estimated tax I'd paid and tried to get me to pay a penalty for not paying -- AND the business lost money last year! (How often do YOU pay taxes on money you've lost?] Plus, when I opened the file I'd saved from January, the program did not remember where I was but started over at the beginning. Very lame. Yes, TT costs twice as much, but it terms of ease of use and lower stress factor, it is probably worth it. Sigh. I really expected more.
Feb 26, 2009. I've just finished my personal 1040 taxes, and my what a difference! This part of the software is professional, smooth, and easy to use. It recognizes my monitor (ta da!) so I don't have to reconfigure my system to run it. However, I changed the location of my tax file, and it did not remember that. It's a little different than TurboTax, but seems to work fine. Only disadvantage I can see compared to TT is that there is no way to see a WYSIWYG version of your forms (what they show you has the information but does not look much like the paper in your hand) and their reporting and comparison functions at the end are not as complete or complex as TT. But it does the job, and the interview is friendly and intelligent.
Now the question is: Knowing that the business software is lousy and the personal stuff is good, what you gonna do?
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