TurboTax Basic Federal + efile 2009
If you have a simple return and would like step-by-step guidance, TurboTax Basic will help you get your biggest refund. Get Your Refund Fast: Efile Your 2009 Taxes with TurboTaxHere’s how efile works: Start your return and efile with TurboTax today. The moment the IRS starts accepting returns, scheduled for January 15, 2010, TurboTax will submit your efiled return. The IRS will confirm receipt by e-mail within 48 hours. Here’s how it works: Asks easy questions We cust [Read More...]
Buy TurboTax Basic Federal + efile 2009 at Amazon
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I’ve used Turbo Tax products for over ten years now, and this is the last version that I will purchase until I’m more disgusted with the other companies tax preparation software than I am with this one.
When I purchased this issue of Turbo Tax, I knew that it didn’t include the ability to use It’s Deductible. I didn’t care because I didn’t want to. My problem is that the software will not acknowledge my donations to charity: I can enter them when I go through the guide, and they show up within the appropriate fields of the worksheets. However, they won’t go into the tax forms and the data fields that are used to determine my 2009 taxes.
This has never been an issue with the Basic version of Turbo Tax before, but for some reason they’ve changed it so that you need to buy the Deluxe version in order to take deductions for donations to charity. After you’ve already spent twenty plus on this version (Basic), you can upgrade to the Deluxe version for about forty dollars. Great, but I can now purchase the Deluxe edition for less than that at several discounters.
My attempts to get help via e-mail are unanswered. I could call a phone agent, but the indicated price is almost thirty dollars per call. My online queries are answered with answers specific to and referencing previous years’ versions of Turbo Tax, but not 2009s.
I don’t know who at Turbo Tax decided to make these changes, but they aren’t doing their customers or the company any favors.
Then again, why do I care, I’m no longer going to be one of their customers. It gets one star because the review area won’t let me give it zero stars.
This review is for TurboTax 2009 Deluxe for Federal Returns. Fortunately I live in Texas and there is no state income tax so I don’t have to worry about the state portion.
TurboTax has had its share of issues but I came back to it because it does seem to be the best there is, but I’m knocking off a star because of the history of issues I’ve had with the program in previous years (like it not calculating tax correctly until I deleted some assets and then re-entered them). However, I was a little shocked to read that it requires 500MB of HD space PLUS up to 620MB more if Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1 is not installed (Mac is only 255MB). Wow! That could be over 1GB to do taxes. How inefficient we have become!
I just installed TurboTax Fed Deluxe on a Vista x64 system (it’s Jan 7th, 2010) and didn’t have any problems. In fact, it installed very quickly considering that it claims it needs 500MB (but I do have an SSD drive that greatly speeds things up). TurboTax immediately found 4 updates and asked me if I wanted to update. The updates seemed to have installed just fine. “Uninstall or change a programs” says TurboTax 2009 is using 343MB. It says TurboTax 2008 (from last year and still on my computer) is “only” 162MB, so a BIG increase (but I wonder how accurate are these figures?). In any case, even 1GB of space is not a big requirement nowadays.
I will be working with this to help estimate my 2009 taxes before I pay may Jan 15th estimated tax payment.
NOTE: Deluxe will do a Schedule C just fine, but it may not provide as much help as the Home & Business version. If you have been doing taxes yourself for awhile then you might not need to pay the extra money for the additional help. The same with other editions, TurboTax encourages “overbuying” just to get “extra guidance”, the “audit meter”, and/or “It’s Deductible”. All forms are included with all the editions.
I will update this review as I continue to use the product.
Pros:
* All editions include all forms
* Works on 64-bit versions of Windows XP and higher (of course that includes Vista and Windows 7)
* On Jan 8th, I used it to help compute an estimate of the tax I will owe for 2009 to help determine what to pay for my last 2009 estimated tax payment and the program did not crash.
* I had a “flawless” install and update on Vista 64-bit – didn’t ask for any serial or reg code
* Probably the best tax program there is
* Price includes federal E-File
* Deluxe version can do a Schedule C for the self-employed – but it doesn’t provide as much guidance as the Home & Business edition
Cons:
* Not perfect (but how can US taxes ever be perfect)?
* Annoying “smart” input entries that try to format things like dates while you’re still entering them
* Bad/complicated handling of SEP contributions
* Have encountered bugs in previous years that caused me to have to delete and re-enter assets
* Might take up to 1.12GB of HD space on Windows according to the system requirements