Turbo Tax 2009
This year I get to try my yearly tax preparation and filing using Turbo Tax 2009 from Intuit that worked well and is really a good tax filing and preparation software package for personal and self employment taxes.
Ease of Use, Performance: 23/25
Look & Feel: 23/25
Features 24/25
How much I enjoy 20/25
Total: 90/100
Turbo Tax is the other tax preparation software and also includes filing your federal taxes over the internet as part of the package. I received the Turbo Tax Home & Business 2009 for reviewing and filing my federal and state taxes that went pretty well.
I did have one major problem and a couple of smaller ones but I cannot be sure if the bigger problem was my fault or the tax programs, I think it was mine. I am pretty sure I filled out the information about my two dependents but somehow when I filled out the form and filed it the older of my two dependents was not on the form as being one of my deductions.
I caught this when printing out my return and noticed on the main page of the 1040 that it only listed one son in the dependents block. A bit too late to correct as before you print it you do send it to federal for filing but it really is not a problem as you can always correct errors simply by filing a 1040X later.
When I do receive my taxes I will have to file an amendment which is no big deal and not the first time I have messed up on my taxes. I did have a nice time filling out my taxes with my multitude of deductions that did not amount to enough to bother with as they did not equal or go over the standard deduction.
When filling out your taxes if the deductions amount to less than the standard deduction you should just take the greater deduction amount using the standard deduction which is what I did. Even when I had just purchased my home last year I still did not have enough deductions to equal the standard one for filing married joint status.
The one thing I do not like about Turbo Tax is when finishing up your taxes and filing both the state and federal you are given the option to pay for the state tax filing fee using a credit card or have it withheld from your taxes. But beware, if you have it withheld from your taxes there will be an additional $30 fee stated as Refund Processing Service Fee for filing state taxes.
They should clearly state on the page this fee and that you can avoid it by choosing to pay with a credit card instead of not telling you anything about this fee on the same page. It is quite clear what the $20 cost for the state filing is but not what this fee is for and plenty of people on the internet at the Turbo Tax website and elsewhere are a bit confused about this.
Filling out the tax form, answering questions really, is very straight forward for most of the forms and you simply start with the simple things and move on to facts and figures. You start with your personal information like name, address and social security numbers and continue adding W-2’s and more to get all the straight forward things added.
Some areas are not so matter of fact like your deductions but basically if you have a receipt you may be able to use it for a deduction. There are energy deductions like purchasing energy star appliances or insulation for your home you can deduct as well as things like charitable contributions and business expenses and the program covers them all.
Using the Turbo Tax question and answer you go through each section of your tax forms and fill in things like your dependents, deductions, any odd income like freelance writing or odd jobs from 1099 forms and any other income like cashing in stocks or annuity funds. This made for some easy work but before I had my tax form for the annuity fund I cashed in I was looking at the wrong area on the Turbo Tax program.
When you fill out your Turbo Tax questionnaire it really helps to have all your tax forms and you should have no problems with any of it, any forms you get with a form number like 1099-? Will have an appropriate section of the question and answer so it really is quite easy to figure out. The tax forms you get have numbered boxes and the questions will have the same numbers so you just transfer the things in each box from the form to the program.
The Turbo Tax program has different sections that it uses to group areas together with Personal Info, Business, Personal, State Taxes, Wrap-Up and Print & File being the main sections. The Personal Info is self explanatory and the Business and Personal are for both kinds of income and deductions while the rest are also pretty self explanatory.
Actually all the areas are very self explanatory and you just go from each section and fill out questions using your forms and other paperwork. These are the areas like education expenses, child care expenses, income from stocks or interest and just about any income and deductions you could imagine.
You can jump around from one section to another easily and even go back after taking a break or waiting for more paperwork which may explain how I lost a dependent on my form. When you go out of order you may forget to go back and get things finished but you can easily see areas in each section you have completed on each section listing.
I would really suggest you either go from start to finish and complete the whole tax return without stopping or when you do stop go back to the stopped section and continue on as well as double check all sections. I think I did not go back and double check all sections to make sure I had everything filled out as I was very concerned about the annuity funds I cashed in and probably didn’t check things well enough.
I had no problems once I received the 1099 from the company that we had the annuity with and the rest of the forms went even easier than I had hoped for. The deductions for my home purchase were very easy to work with and things went quickly as I had all my paperwork easily at hand when completing these sections.
The deductions for my house purchase were very easy with everything well laid out like what I could claim and what is not included being very well explained. Each question has a clickable popup that explains things and sometimes gives links to the internet for further explanation.
Some of the questions or fill in areas have automatic completion from companies like when claiming stocks or annuities from a sale where the program tries to get the information directly from the company. I tried this for my annuity sale and did not get the automatic fill in to work so I had to fill things in by hand but it was only about three boxes to complete.
In all I was very pleased with how my tax return filing went and I finally, three business days after sending in my state taxes got my state refund back. I am still waiting for my federal refund but I know that will take a week more till I get it deposited directly to my checking account. When getting a refund you can simply get a check or have refunds deposited directly to a checking account through Turbo Tax just like H7R Block or just doing the forms on your own and mailing in.
Some parts of the program that you may want to look at before purchasing are support, asking questions and costs; Turbo Tax Business and Personal costs about $75 online or $100 if you get the program on disc. The H&R Block version that is the largest version you can purchase is $50 and both Turbo Tax and H&R Block require an additional fee for filing state taxes.
Turbo Tax Business & Personal 2009 allows 5 federal filings using the one software package for e-filing your federal tax returns and you only get one federal e-filings with H&R Block Premium. The Turbo Tax 2009 costs $20 to e-file a single state tax while H&R Block costs $30 to e-file a state tax so the Turbo Tax is cheaper for e-filing.
Support is another big if; first if you need help and what type of help do you need but both programs compare about equally in my opinion. For most people who are purchasing a tax software filing program online help in the form of general questions and online communities may be enough to answer your questions. Others may need to talk to someone individually and both Turbo Tax and H&R Block offer a onetime call for tax help with their programs.
As far as I can tell both will charge for further calls but help through emails and visiting forums is free and may answer many questions. For help and support having the call option is nice but you may not even need it as many people are probably having the same questions so just going online and searching may find an answer.
I think the main difference here is what e-filing you want to do and how many federal taxes you are filing for taxes as well as your previous year’s tax preparation software. If you are only filling out 1 form and only have one e-file for federal both programs would not compare as H&R Block is less expensive.
If you if you have a couple federal files to do the Turbo Tax would be less expensive such as yourself and a dependent or married couples filing separate returns. The Turbo Tax also costs less for your state e-filing so if you are sending your state returns in through the internet the Turbo Tax is less expensive.
If you have multiple federal forms to send in or if your doing multiple state forms than you may want to check out Turbo Tax especially if you do not need the business edition. The lesser costing editions and the fact that you can use the online download costs less so may be the way to go for all your tax needs.
Mainly Turbo Tax seems to be less expensive for some circumstances but it really depends on your individual tax situation. Check out Turbo Tax 2009 for your tax needs as I found it worked just fine and I did not have any problems with the program itself which was easy to use.